More than three years ago, 23andMe launched 25 new African Ethnolinguistic Genetic Groups. We’re excited to announce that this week we’ve updated these groups and now have more than 250 Genetic Groups across Sub-Saharan Africa.
This update may be especially helpful for Americans in the African diaspora whose genealogical ties and records were severed by the transatlantic slave trade. More than 80% of our Black and African American customers, who are on our latest genotyping chip, will now see matches to one or more of these new Genetic Groups. And 23andMe+ Premium™ members will also be able to see any distant Genetic Group connections they may have to these regions.
This update better reflects geographic, cultural, and language data for 23andMe customers with ancestry in Africa, and significantly improves the accuracy and specificity of Genetic Groups in this continent. Some of these new Genetic Groups overlap with the previous Genetic Groups in Africa; however, all African Genetic Groups now have more information, such as common haplogroups, languages, and ancestor locations. Even if your matches haven’t changed, there’s still more to discover about your heritage.
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This update takes advantage of our ongoing improvements to probabilistic models and classifiers in order to connect customers to more specific and precise regions and peoples in Africa. Critical to the development of these models was vastly expanded and more diverse reference data from 23andMe customers who have consented to participate in research and tell us about their ancestry. You can learn more about why improving the diversity of research participants is so important on our Global Genetics Project page.
By combining cutting-edge statistical techniques with data from an expanded pool of reference individuals, we can better distinguish between closely related populations, significantly enhancing the number and specificity of Genetic Groups across Africa.
Check out your results
With this significant update, discovering more about your African heritage with 23andMe has never been more specific. This is part of our ongoing commitment to improving our science and representation for all our customers. We can’t wait for you to see it. Log in to explore your updated results in your Ancestry Composition report today.
A few more details about this update
- Some Genetic Groups are located in parts of Africa where we don’t yet have existing ancestry populations. In the Ancestry Composition report, Genetic Groups normally appear under specific ancestry populations (for example Genetic Groups in Portugal may be found under the “Portuguese & Galician” population). However, some regions in Africa are not currently included in any ancestry population. Genetic Groups in these regions appear under the ancestry population that is most commonly assigned to people who match to these Genetic Groups. For example, people from Cameroon often have a mix of Angolan & Congolese and Nigerian ancestry, so matches to Genetic Groups in Cameroon may appear under one of those populations. The same is true in Southern Africa, where many people have a blend of Angolan & Congolese and Southern East African ancestry, so Genetic Groups in that region may show up under those populations.
- Some customers who had matches to the previous Genetic Groups in Africa will no longer see those matches. Many customers who previously had matches to Genetic Groups in Africa may see the new, updated version of those groups (for example, if you previously had a Genetic Group called “Kongo & Mbundu peoples” you will likely see the updated version of that group that is also called “Kongo & Mbundu peoples”). However, some people may no longer see any Genetic Groups in Africa. This can be because they share low amounts of DNA with multiple groups and therefore don’t meet the threshold for any given group. Some individuals have ancestors spread across many groups and do not share enough DNA with a single group to get a match. In addition, unfortunately customers on genotyping chips other than V5 will not have access to this update as the data quality requirements for the new model’s high-resolution classifications could not be met with older genotyping chips. Customers on older chip versions are still able to see their previous results for these Genetic Groups.
- This update only adds new Genetic Groups in Eastern, Middle, Southern, and Western Africa. We have not updated Genetic Groups in North Africa. We plan to continue to increase the diversity, accuracy, and specificity of Genetic Groups around the world with future updates.
Where are the new Genetic Groups?
With this update there are now:
- 57 Nigerian Genetic Groups
- 44 Angolan & Congolese Genetic Groups
- 41 Ethiopian & Eritrean Genetic Groups
- 32 Ghanaian, Liberian & Sierra Leonean Genetic Groups
- 32 Southern East African Genetic Groups
- 28 Somali Genetic Groups
- 22 Senegambian & Guinean Genetic Groups
- 9 Sudanese Genetic Groups
- 2 African Hunter-Gatherer Genetic Groups
