<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-20419" alt="Genetic Network SXSW" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/03042014_SXSW_Posts_GeneticNetwork.jpg" width="792" height="1224" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/03042014_SXSW_Posts_GeneticNetwork.jpg 792w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/03042014_SXSW_Posts_GeneticNetwork-194x300.jpg 194w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/03042014_SXSW_Posts_GeneticNetwork-768x1187.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/03042014_SXSW_Posts_GeneticNetwork-663x1024.jpg 663w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/03042014_SXSW_Posts_GeneticNetwork-569x880.jpg 569w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/03042014_SXSW_Posts_GeneticNetwork-764x1180.jpg 764w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 792px) 100vw, 792px" />For the tens of thousands of people at the <a href="http://sxsw.com/">South by Southwest</a> conference in Austin this week, attending is about more than just seeing new music and hearing about new ideas, it’s about making new connections.
But 23andMe researchers found that just about everybody there is already connected. In fact any two people attending the SXSW conference is connected through just one or two or three other individuals.
<h6>Interconnectedness </h6>
Why is this a revelation?
This isn’t a social connection; it’s a genetic connection. It’s not that you are connected to someone else because of who you know, it’s that you are connected to someone else because of who you are related to.
Previous theories of connectivity focused on social connections; the idea that we are all – all seven billion of us – linked to each other by six degrees of separation. These links were first written about by <a href="http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2786545?uid=3739256&#038;uid=2&#038;uid=4&#038;sid=56200129733">Stanley Milgram </a>from experiments he did in the late 1960s. It’s a little more complicated than what Milgram theorized but he got the gist right. More recently <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/technology/between-you-and-me-4-74-degrees.html?_r=3&#038;scp=1&#038;sq=4.74&#038;st=cse">Facebook</a> and LinkedIn have shown that just four social connections could link any two people together.
<h6>Three Degrees of Separation</h6>
This theory of connectivity even spawned the game,  <a href="http://oracleofbacon.org/">“Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.”</a> Kevin <a href="http://schedule.sxsw.com/2014/events/event_IAP28467">is talking in Austin</a> this week. But the theory of social connections that spawned the game doesn&#8217;t quite match how close we all really are.   23andMe can connect an attendee at SXSW to any other attendees through three or four genetic connections. To do that we would make the connection by finding someone an attendee is related to, who is related to someone who then connects them to someone else at SXSW. There may be two or three cousins that separate each attendee from someone else at the conference, but the connection the two have is made through genetics.
Looking at the <a href="http://schedule.sxsw.com/?conference=interactive">SXSW Interactive</a> portion of the conference, every one of the 30,000 of those people going has a cousin in attendance. A few may have as many as 35 first cousins, meaning that they share a grandparent.  On average everyone there has between one or two second cousins, meaning that that they each share the same great grandparent.
SXSW is about bringing people together, but they are all already closer than they know.

23andMe Blog

23andMe Blog Team

Three Degrees of Separation At SXSW

On Sunday you can listen in to 23andMe’s CEO and co-founder Anne Wojcicki as she delivers the keynote of the South-by-Southwest Interactive conference in Austin.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-full wp-image-17010" alt="23andMe-Anne-001" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/23andMe-Anne-001.jpg" width="165" height="236" />
Her talk <a href="http://schedule.sxsw.com/2014/events/event_IAP995218">“The Future of Genetics in Our Everyday Lives”</a> will be streamed live <a href="http://www.sxsw.com/live" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">here</a>   at 2 p.m. Central Time or noon Pacific Time. Anne’s talk will include a discussion with the audience and she’ll be taking questions from Twitter using using #AskAnne.
This promises to be a lively discussion not just about 23andMe, but genetics, big data, research and healthcare. If you can’t tune in live, we’ll be updating this post with more details about her presentation after the event. Stay tuned.

23andMe Live From Austin

The ashes of the Holocaust left very little for Peter Istvan Kovacs to sift through in his search for his ancestors. 
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-20406" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Peter-Kovacs-Photo-300x282.jpg" alt="OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA" width="300" height="282" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Peter-Kovacs-Photo-300x282.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Peter-Kovacs-Photo-768x722.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Peter-Kovacs-Photo-880x828.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Peter-Kovacs-Photo.jpg 991w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /> 
There were very few Hungarian Jews who survived the war and exterminations. Among those murdered was Peter’s great grandfather, beaten to death in 1941 for refusing to convert to Christianity. Also lost to extermination camps and violence were innumerable relatives, he said.
<h6>“My grandmother had 11 brothers and sisters, and they all had many children,” he said. “We were a big family once.”Lost to War and Genocide</h6>
That family is gone now.
“I didn’t have any siblings and thought I had only two real cousins,” said Peter, who is a college student with an interest in anthropology and genetics. “We’re not a big family anymore.”
Wanting to know more about his ancestors Peter decided to get tested with 23andMe. He was interested in his ancestry and there just wasn’t anyone to ask.
“I’m interested in my roots,” he said.
<h6>Using DNA Testing to Explore Ancestry</h6>
Peter had heard about 23andMe and thought he might learn more about his ancestors.
On both his father’s and his mother’s side of the family, the war and Holocaust left very few survivors. It was much the same for all the Jews of Hungary, where the number of Jews before the war totaled about 6 percent of the country’s total population. After the war number of Jews there only amounted to about .1 percent of the total population.
For many people like Peter, who lost ancestors in the Holocaust it’s very difficult to piece together their family’s past. Over the years organizations have formed to help both survivors and their descendants piece together those missing pieces of their family history.
Those are important resources, but Peter also wanted to make connections using 23andMe.
“The day when I got my results has become a very important event for my life,” he said. “I just got a &#8220;family&#8221; back. At least that&#8217;s how I feel now and I&#8217;m so happy.”
<h6>Connecting to Cousins</h6>
He learned more about his ancestry, which includes both Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jewish roots.  And he found more than 1,000 23andMe DNA Relative matches – third and fourth cousins. More recently Peter found second cousins and one first cousin, using 23andMe. Those connections helped him find whole branches of his family that he didn’t know still existed. He was able to connect with many of his closest connections, learning that some of his relatives had escaped Hungary before and after the war, and immigrated to both Israel and the United States.
“They are very nice,” Peter said. “ Seeing their success and meeting them gives me new hope in life. And me who never had any siblings now has so many cousins.”
He also learned that one of his great grandfathers on his father’s side, Henrik RosenblÃ¼th, survived the death camps. Those relatives were able to fill him in on family history he would never have learned otherwise.
“It makes my heart warm. They survived,&#8221; Peter said. &#8221; I really cannot express my feelings, but it&#8217;s just beautiful.&#8221;
23andMe provides genetic testing services for informational purposes; your results may or may not help you to search for or identify relatives or family members.

Out Of The Ashes

Editor&#8217;s note 3/17: Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates wrote about Kasia&#8217;s research and &#8220;hidden African ancestry&#8221; in the The Root. Check it out.
Scientists have long used DNA to inform our understanding of big epochs of<a href="http://admixturemap.paintmychromosomes.com/"> human change and migration</a>. But what about the smaller changes, can DNA tell us something about recent human history?
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-full wp-image-4565" alt="diversity photo" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/iStock_000004751590XSmall.jpg" width="300" height="199" />
23andMe researcher Katarzyna &#8220;Kasia&#8221; Bryc, who is also a postdoctoral research fellow in<a href="http://genetics.med.harvard.edu/reich/Reich_Lab/Welcome.html"> David Reich’s lab</a> at Harvard Medical School, gathered anonymous aggregated data from our customers to look at the mix of African, European and Native American ancestry in the United States. What she discovered was an illuminating genetic portrait of the U.S. that both confirms some of what we know about America’s social history but also other things that are surprising and new.
“Perhaps one of the greatest discoveries stemming from recent advancements in genetic genealogy is that previously held assumptions about race and identity are being brought into question,” Harvard Professor Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr. wrote<a href="https://www.theroot.com/do-most-whites-have-traces-of-african-dna-as-i-do-1790874465"> recently</a>. “It was always known throughout American history that there was at least some intermixing of races, but only now, through DNA testing, can we see the extent to which this actually occurred.”
Gates was writing about something we’ve reported on in the past, the “<a href="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/ASHG2011poster-Mountain-1.pdf">hidden” African ancestry</a> among white Americans.  Because of the ugly history of slavery, most African Americans have at least some European ancestry. But what is less known is how many individuals who identify as being of solely European ancestry – or white – also have African ancestry.  
Note that we use the term “hidden,” because these individuals self-identify as white and because of their very small percentage of African ancestry, may be unaware. But some of these individuals may indeed know about that African ancestry.
Kasia’s research confirmed in more detail 23andMe’s earlier findings, and she looked at how that mix of ancestry for self-identified whites, African Americans and Latinos differed from state-to-state.
Taken together Kasia’s research helps fill in more detail of how migration, as well as social and racial divisions shaped America.
<h6>Hidden African Ancestry Redux</h6>
A few years ago, Joanna Mountain, 23andMe Senior Director of Research, presented<a href="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/ASHG2011poster-Mountain-1.pdf"> preliminary findings</a> at an American Society of Human Genetics conference looking at the numbers of individuals who identified as white, but who had what was likely “hidden African ancestry.”<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-20364" alt="African Ancestry for Self-Identified Whites" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/African-Ancestry-for-Self-Identified-Whites-300x174.jpg" width="300" height="174" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/African-Ancestry-for-Self-Identified-Whites-300x174.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/African-Ancestry-for-Self-Identified-Whites-768x446.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/African-Ancestry-for-Self-Identified-Whites-880x511.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/African-Ancestry-for-Self-Identified-Whites.jpg 1012w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
In an update to that work, our researcher Kasia Bryc found that about about 4 percent of whites have at least 1 percent or more African ancestry.
Although it is a relatively small percentage, the percentage indicates that an individual with at least 1 percent African ancestry had an African ancestor within the last six generations, or in the last 200 years. This data also suggests that individuals with mixed parentage at some point were absorbed into the white population.
Looking a little more deeply into the data, Kasia also found that the percentage of whites with hidden African ancestry differed significantly from state-to-state. Southern states with the highest African American populations, tended to have the highest percentages of hidden African ancestry.
In South Carolina  at least 13 percent of self-identified whites have 1 percent or more African ancestry, while in Louisiana the number is a little more than 12 percent. In Georgia and Alabama the number is about 9 percent. The differences perhaps point to different social and cultural histories within the south.
<h6>The DNA of African Americans</h6>
Most African Americans know they have some European ancestry. It’s a vestige of slavery. But what can be surprising is what that mix of ancestry can say about social history in America.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-20365" alt="African Ancestry in African Americans" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/African-Ancestry-in-African-Americans-300x186.jpg" width="300" height="186" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/African-Ancestry-in-African-Americans-300x186.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/African-Ancestry-in-African-Americans-768x477.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/African-Ancestry-in-African-Americans-880x547.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/African-Ancestry-in-African-Americans.jpg 882w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Previous published studies estimate that on average African Americans had about 82 percent African ancestry and about 18 percent European ancestry. But in self-identified African Americans in 23andMe’s database, Kasia found the average amount of African ancestry was closer to 73 percent.
Kasia found significant differences in state-to-state comparisons. African Americans in the northern and western states have more mixed ancestry than those in the southern states. African Americans living in South Carolina have the highest proportion of African ancestry, about 84 percent, compared to those living in any other state.
A significant percentage of African Americans, more than 5 percent, had at least 2 percent Native American ancestry. This is much higher than previous estimates or data from the US Census.
<h6>Latinos in the USA</h6>
Looking at the mix of European, African and Native American ancestry, self-identified Latinos in the 23andMe database had the most diversity in their ancestry. But again, just as the mix of ancestry among African Americans and whites differed from state-to state, so too did Latinos, which again sheds more light on their social history.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-20369" alt="Native American Ancestry in Latinos" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Native-American-Ancestry-in-Latinos1-300x173.jpg" width="300" height="173" />
On average Latinos had about 70 percent European ancestry, 14 percent Native American ancestry and 6 percent African ancestry.
The remaining ancestry is difficult to assign because the DNA is either shared by a number of different populations around the world, or because it’s from understudied populations, such as Native Americans. Obviously that large “unassigned” percentage means that those “averages” could be higher. As with African Americans, looking at the regional and state-to-state numbers for self-identified Latinos, the differences are striking.
Recent studies have shown that countries across South America, the Caribbean, and Mexico have different profiles of genetic ancestry molded by each populations&#8217; unique history.
According to 23andMe’s data, the United States has its own set of unique regional histories.
For example, some Latinos have no discernible  Native American ancestry, while others have as much as 50 percent of the ancestry being Native American. Latinos in states in the Southwest, bordering Mexico – New Mexico, Texas, California and Arizona – have the greatest percentage of Native American ancestry. Latinos in states with the largest proportion of African Americans in their population – South Carolina, Louisiana and Alabama – have the highest percentage of African Ancestry.
<h6>Every Picture Tells A Story</h6>
America is a crossroads of cultures and our DNA reflects this. Kasia’s research sketches a picture of a few of those cultures but is far from offering the full genetic portrait of the people of the United States. Still her work illustrates the power of DNA – and the 23andMe database – to tell us about ourselves and our history.
*Apologies to Bryan Sykes for our appropriation of the title of his 2012 book, <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/recommended-reading/dna-usa/">“DNA USA: A Genetic Portrait of America.”</a>  A great read, the book is both a travelogue and a series of short profiles of people with different ancestral backgrounds, who have had their DNA tested.

DNA USA* Revisited

Libby is a geneticist for NOAA Fisheries, the federal agency responsible for the management and conservation of living marine resources. One of her responsibilities is to genotype endangered species of fish, tracking generations of families. That’s right, fish have families. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-20356" alt="Libby_Amsterdam" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Libby_Amsterdam-225x300.jpg" width="225" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Libby_Amsterdam-225x300.jpg 225w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Libby_Amsterdam-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Libby_Amsterdam-660x880.jpg 660w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Libby_Amsterdam-885x1180.jpg 885w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Libby_Amsterdam.jpg 1578w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px" />They have pedigrees. The irony is, Libby does not.
She turned to 23andMe to help her explore the health and family history she couldn’t learn about any other way. 
Adopted in 1963, Libby never knew a biological relative until her children were born. She had scant information regarding her birth parents. She knew her birth mother was born in Rupert, Idaho, but no names of immediate family members.
“I would search for clues, maybe find a name, but would not really know if I was on the right path because I had nothing to go on,” she said. “It was disappointing”
Libby only had a cursory family health history. Like many adoptees, Libby has never had a family medical history to share with a doctor to help guide her care.
Several years ago, Libby was able to get her original birth certificate with her birth mother’s name and birthplace.
“I kind of sat on that for a while, did some searches and nothing came up so I thought it was just another dead end.”
Then Libby became a mom.
The search for answers was not just about her but for her children as well. She has a “family”, the loving couple that raised her. What she is looking for is “history”.
“I guess it happened when I had kids of my own and I could see the resemblance when I look at them. And other people will say ’Oh, yes. She IS your daughter.’ But then I would look in the mirror and say, “Who do I look like?”
Libby had no family photos. No faces to look at and compare.
A colleague told Libby about 23andMe. She immediately sent in a test kit for herself. The information she received amazed her. Soon, she ordered test kits for her husband and children.
On the ancestry side, 23andMe matched her with a predicted third or fourth cousin.
“One of the family locations she listed was Rupert. The hair on the back of my neck stood up: this could not be a coincidence,” Libby said. “ It is difficult to convey the heady feeling of finally discovering a biological relative after all these years of searching and wondering.”
Not long after, an even closer match, a woman named Dianne who turned out to be Libby’s birth mother&#8217;s second cousin.
“She was kind and welcoming enough to help me fill in many of the names that she knew, and pointed me to a wealth of published family histories to fill in names of my other ancestors.” Libby said, who learned she had nine first cousins from Dianne.
Libby knew that her mother’s pregnancy had been kept secret from the families of her birth parents. Libby learned that her mother had gone to great lengths to conceal the pregnancy by attending college in Hawaii while pregnant and then giving birth in Oregon. Her birth parents were college students at the time and this was after all, 1963.
“My existence came as a surprise to Dianne – she had really only been searching for information about her father&#8217;s side of the family and did not expect to uncover a new cousin,” Libby said. “I am a secret no more.”
Libby has now started sketching out her biological family tree. She only has a few branches but it is growing. She can now trace her maternal line back five generations!
“What 23andMe has done for me personally is nothing short of a breakthrough, and the best part is that my story just keeps growing.”

A Secret No More

In honor of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, one of our computational biologists, Emma Pierson, took a look at aggregated de-identified data from 23andMe customers, focusing on associations between certain traits and participation in sports.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-30244 size-full" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/GettyImages-510165920-scaled.jpg" alt="" width="8000" height="4000" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/GettyImages-510165920-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/GettyImages-510165920-scaled-300x150.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/GettyImages-510165920-scaled-1024x512.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/GettyImages-510165920-scaled-768x384.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/GettyImages-510165920-scaled-880x440.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/GettyImages-510165920-scaled-1180x590.jpg 1180w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 8000px) 100vw, 8000px" />
Unfortunately, we have no data on <a href="http://www.sochi2014.com/en/curling" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">curling</a>, but Emma looked at a range of 39 different sports from archery to wrestling. She found associations between athletics and certain personality types, different kinds of injuries, and participant’s relative level of health.
Some of these associations make sense – tall people play basketball, flexible people do yoga and gymnastics. And if you are athletic and active it stands to reason that you get some health benefits from that. But other associations Emma found are thought-provoking.
In terms of personality traits, the athletic tend to be more adventurous, assertive, optimistic and extroverted. They are also less anxious, neurotic and shy. Go team!
But all that activity unsurprisingly made them more injury-prone. Emma found those who participated in sports are more likely to have had dislocated joints, tendinitis, ACL tears, shin splints, arthroscopic surgery, and ankle sprains.
<div id="attachment_20337" style="width: 450px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-20337" class=" wp-image-20337 " src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Sport-Clusters.jpg" alt="We found we could divide our 39 sports into eight different clusters: in the picture below, two sports are connected if people who play one sport also tend to play the other sport. You can also see the interactive visualization here. " width="440" height="330" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Sport-Clusters.jpg 550w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Sport-Clusters-300x225.jpg 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 440px) 100vw, 440px" />We found we could divide the sports into eight different clusters with any two sports   connected if people who play one sport also tend to play the other sport. You can also see the interactive visualization <a href="http://cs.stanford.edu/people/emmap1/visualizations/sports/sports.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">here</a>. Emma came up with the unique classifications.</div>
And then there is this: People who play sports report health benefits – lower heart rates, lower stress and are less likely to be short of breath after climbing on stairs.
Even when you control for age, income and BMI, they still report health benefits. But controlling for those same things Emma also found that athletic people simply have a more positive perception of their own health. For example, Emma compared sporty and non-sporty customers, who have similar BMI, and found that those who participate in sports tend to rate their health higher. They even rate themselves as more attractive, and better at math.
Different physical traits predispose us towards different sports. 
<style type="text/css"></style>
<table class="tableizer-table">
<tbody>
<tr class="tableizer-firstrow">
<th>If you&#8230;</th>
<th>You’re more likely to engage in&#8230;</th>
<th>But less likely to engage in&#8230;</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Are really flexible</td>
<td>Yoga, Martial Arts, Dance, Gymnastics, Skating, Swimming, Jogging, Aerobics, Eliptical Machine</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Are taller</td>
<td>Golf, Baseball Football, Basketball,Swimming and Volleyball</td>
<td>Gymnastics,</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Have bigger feet</td>
<td>Baseball Football, Basketball, Weight-lifting and Volleyball</td>
<td>Dance and Gymnastics</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Suffer from altitude sickness</td>
<td></td>
<td>Hiking, Downhill Skiing, Backpacking, Cycing, Yoga and Jogging</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Many other lifestyle traits showed sport-specific effects as well. 
<style type="text/css"></style>
<table class="tableizer-table">
<tbody>
<tr class="tableizer-firstrow">
<th>If you&#8230;</th>
<th>You’re more likely to engage in&#8230;</th>
<th>But less likely to engage in&#8230;</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Are politically conservative</td>
<td>Golf, Baseball and Football</td>
<td>Hiking, Cross Country Skiing, Walking, Cycling, and Yoga</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Have a good sense of direction</td>
<td>Hiking, Backpacking, Walking, Downhill Skiing, Golf, Cycling, Swimming, Dance, Volleyball, and Soccer</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Were in the military</td>
<td>Running, Powerlifting, Jogging, Martial Arts, Elliptical Machine</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Use a tanning bed</td>
<td>Stair Climbing, Jogging, Aerobics, Weight Lifting, Elliptical Machine</td>
<td>Hiking</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

The Sporting Life

When he was seven years old, Francisco Caravayo’s Puerto Rican grandmother told him a secret that he didn’t really grasp until decades later when he tested with 23andMe.
“I’m so grateful for the opportunity to finally have confirmation of my history,” Francisco said.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-20313 size-medium" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Francisco-Photo-1-248x300.jpg" alt="" width="248" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Francisco-Photo-1-248x300.jpg 248w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Francisco-Photo-1.jpg 411w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 248px) 100vw, 248px" />
<h6>Hidden Ancestry</h6>
When he tested with 23andMe, Francisco had wanted to contribute to research while exploring a little of his family’s Portuguese ancestry.
“My brother and I always felt as if there was a culture of secrets in our family,” said Francisco.  “When my grandmother said to all my cousins, ‘Never forget, you are of God’s chosen people,’ I knew what she meant, but didn’t understand why we couldn’t talk about it.”
In telling his story, Francisco goes back to his childhood, growing up in a Latino neighborhood. Most of his friends were Catholic, and although his family was  Lutheran and went to church regularly, something didn’t feel quite right to him.
“We went to church, but my father was always saying things like ‘Remember, Jesus was a Jew,’” Francisco said.
<h6>Conversos</h6>
After Francisco went away to college, he had a discussion one day with a Portuguese professor about his last name.  She told him that his surname was taken by Portuguese Jews many of whom had been forced to convert to Catholicism by the Inquisition, and many of these <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-20316" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Star-of-David-180x300.jpg" alt="Star of David" width="180" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Star-of-David-180x300.jpg 180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Star-of-David-768x1280.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Star-of-David-614x1024.jpg 614w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Star-of-David-528x880.jpg 528w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Star-of-David-708x1180.jpg 708w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Star-of-David-scaled.jpg 1536w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 180px) 100vw, 180px" />
There were other clues.  His grandmother lit candles on Friday nights.  She taught the family that dairy and meat were not to be mixed and that shellfish were to be avoided.  Pork was eaten apologetically.  Christmas and Easter were not celebrated with joy, but with what can only be described as an obligation, as if performing a chore.  And when Francisco’s father died, Francisco followed family tradition: no clergy were present at the funeral and no Christian iconography was put on the gravestone.
<h6>Exploring His Jewish Ancestry</h6>
He began to explore his Portuguese roots and studying more about Judaism.  Shortly afterward, he saw an article in OUT Magazine about 23andMe’s research.  Francisco decided to get tested as a way to not just contribute to research, but also explore his own ancestry.
His results indicated Iberian ancestry, but also he saw that his paternal haplotype was shared by 20-to-30 percent of Sephardic Jews.
“That information was so grounding,” said Francisco. “I didn’t expect to find that I was 100 percent Jewish, because my ancestors tried to blend in and marry non-Jews, but I finally had evidence.”
He traced his haplogroup’s migration, and it matched up with the diaspora’s migratory patterns.  He was one of the thousands of families whose ancestors had escaped persecution by hiding their religion.
“I was sitting at the computer crying,” said Francisco
Not only did Francisco find answers to his past, but he also found a community of people on the 23andMe message boards that shared the same haplotype.  Through the online community, he’s been able to meet others like him and trade stories and information.
Francisco has now completed his conversion process to Judaism.  While he was going through the conversion, he met his current partner, who is Jewish too.
“I finally felt whole,” he said.

23andMe Helps Uncover Hidden Jewish Ancestry

For Valentine’s Day, we analyzed data from 15,298 real-world couples who had children together and found that people paired with others who were more like themselves than they were different.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-20325 alignright" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/02122014_ValentinesDayPost_4-522x1024.jpg" alt="02122014_ValentinesDayPost_4" width="300" height="589" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/02122014_ValentinesDayPost_4-522x1024.jpg 522w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/02122014_ValentinesDayPost_4-153x300.jpg 153w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/02122014_ValentinesDayPost_4-768x1507.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/02122014_ValentinesDayPost_4-448x880.jpg 448w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/02122014_ValentinesDayPost_4-601x1180.jpg 601w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/02122014_ValentinesDayPost_4.jpg 960w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Opposites, it turns out, may not attract after all
<h2>What Couples Have in Common</h2>
According to our data, partners tend to be about the same age, share the same education level, have a similar Body Mass Index, and even tend to be apologetic.
Athletes tended to pair with other athletes, downhill skiers with downhill skiers, hikers with hikers, and weightlifters with weightlifters. We also found that punctual people paired with others who were on time, and vegetarians tended to get together with other non-carnivores.
These are accurate correlations, but it is important to note that a correlation <a href="http://xkcd.com/552/">does not imply causation</a>.
Since correlations can be misleading in other ways, one of 23andMe’s computational biologists, Aaron Kleinman, looked a little deeper. Aaron computed the effect size of an individual&#8217;s phenotype on their spouse&#8217;s phenotype, controlling for age and ethnicity. Even when the effect size is strong, it is still important to note that that doesn’t indicate causation either. We don’t know why couples share some of these phenotypes.
And this doesn’t give us any unique insight into why people fall in love. It could be that they share interests in common, but those shared interests could also come after they become a pair. For example, we found strong odds ratios for people who were former smokers being coupled together. Maybe overcoming their shared history of kicking the habit brought them together. Maybe not. We also found individuals who frequented drive-through food establishments paired with others who did the same,   and we found individuals who could speak a second language paired with partners who also spoke a second language. Some of these correlations seem to make intuitive sense to us. For example, if you’re with someone who goes to drive-through food places, odds are you’ll likely go too.
It is also important to note what we did not find. There is no way to determine if two individuals are a couple just by looking at their DNA. Still, we found a lot of correlations.
<h2>Birds Not of a Feather</h2>
So what about opposites?
We did indeed find that opposites appeared to attract in a few ways. Our data shows that a night person is likelier to get together with a morning person. Those who attract mosquitoes end up with those who don’t, and luckily, people with a good sense of direction appear to pair with those who don’t have one.
However, another of our researchers, Emma Pierson, found more data showing that these cases of opposites attracting were the exception to the rule. Emma found that couples who had similar BMIs reported that they were happier. However, she didn’t find any effect for height, so no need to break up with your basketball player hubby.
Happy Valentine’s Day.

23andMe Couples Correlated

For some of us up past midnight pecking away at the computer, apparently, life is less than beautiful.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-17852 size-medium" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Empty-Bed-285x300.jpg" alt="An empty bed." width="285" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Empty-Bed-285x300.jpg 285w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Empty-Bed.jpg 675w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 285px) 100vw, 285px" />As part of our research, 23andMe asks customers all sorts of questions. Some of those concern life satisfaction, but we also ask customers about the consistency of their earwax, the color of their hair, and if they’re extroverted.
While our researchers are looking for interesting genetic associations, sometimes they find associations that have nothing to do with genetics at all.
Recently, one of our researchers – Emma Pierson, a 22-year-old who’ll be studying computational biology at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar soon – noticed something. Customers up late at night and filling out surveys were different than others who answered surveys in the daytime.
Those people who said they were less satisfied with life tended to answer surveys after midnight – 1 a.m. was a particularly low point.
<h6 dir="ltr">Late Nights</h6>
This isn’t a cause and effect. This is simply an association between how people answered these specific survey questions and what hour of the day they responded. As any scientist will tell you an association doesn’t imply causation. In other words, if you start staying up late it doesn’t mean you will suddenly feel less satisfied with your life.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-20307" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Life-Satisfaction-_-Sleepless-300x194.jpg" alt="Life Satisfaction _ Sleepless" width="300" height="194" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Life-Satisfaction-_-Sleepless-300x194.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Life-Satisfaction-_-Sleepless-1024x663.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Life-Satisfaction-_-Sleepless-1180x764.jpg 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Life-Satisfaction-_-Sleepless-768x497.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Life-Satisfaction-_-Sleepless-880x569.jpg 880w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
But the association was numerically significant. Emma tested it to see if the association might be masking another connection. For instance, she noticed that men tended to answer late at night. So could it be that men simply felt less satisfied by life?
<h6 dir="ltr">A 24-Hour Clock</h6>
Emma adjusted for that and found that the association between how you feel about your life and when on a 24-hour clock you filled out the survey doesn&#8217;t hinge on whether you are a man or a woman. People who answered between midnight and dawn just didn’t feel as good about life as those who answered at other times.
Emma, who also has a blog about statistics called <a href="http://obsessionwithregression.blogspot.com/">Obsession with Regression</a>, also found several other associations related to when you fill out a survey. People filling out the surveys late were more likely to have said they experienced mania. Those who filled them out during the day were more likely to have children.
<h6 dir="ltr">Sleep and Health</h6>
While we might not want to make rash conclusions about this association, it does beg the question about what is behind it.
We know that there are well-established connections between sleep and health. We may all need different amounts of sleep. The average American gets just under seven hours a night.
But when we don’t get enough sleep, our health suffers. Lack of sleep is associated with higher blood pressure, as well as increased risks for diabetes and depression. There are new studies that have looked at the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/opinion/sunday/for-sleep-january-is-the-cruelest-month.html">evolution of circadian rhythms. </a> Others have found that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/opinion/sunday/rethinking-sleep.html">continuous sleep is overrated</a> and <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/12/science-of-sleep-trouble-with-snooze-buttons.html">snoozing is bad for you</a>.
We also know that your genetics may determine whether you’re an<a href="http://www.rcinet.ca/english/daily/interviews-2012/10-50_2012-12-20-are-you-an-early-riser-or-a-night-owlr-check-your-dna/"> early riser or a night owl</a>. So at the very least, it’s worth analyzing these associations. Meanwhile, you should probably get some rest.

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