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23andMe Blog

23andMe Blog Team

23andMe Statement Regarding FDA Warning Letter

You learned to like the foods you grew up with, but did you know genetics also influence your food preferences? In addition to influencing your sensitivity to bitter and sweet flavors, genetics also affect brain chemistry and, therefore, how you respond to tastes or other sensory cues.
This Thanksgiving, 23andMe is celebrating all things food, and that starts with sharing what we know about the DNA of your holiday meal.
For example, do you have a sweet tooth? Research shows that people with the GG, AA, or AG genotypes consume, on average, more sugar per day than people with a GC or CC genotype. Those are the people heading straight for the pumpkin pie on Turkey Day!
This Thanksgiving, you’ll also be able to tell if the <a href="https://www.23andme.com/topics/wellness/alcohol-flush-reaction">alcohol flush reaction</a> runs in the family. Relatives with no working copies of the ALDH2 gene are prone to a flushing extreme response from a glass of red wine, while your cousins who inherited two working copies will have little or no flushing reaction.
For people with specific food needs, Thanksgiving can be a challenge. Between 20 percent and 40 percent of us in the US and Europe are likely to be dealing with some form of lactose intolerance in adulthood. At the same time, more than two million Americans suffer from Celiac Disease, a condition that requires them to enjoy a gluten-free holiday feast.
Would you like to know if your ancestors passed down their love of sweets? Or maybe you want to know why you get wired from one cup of coffee? Your 23andMe results will give you a genetic profile that sheds light on:
<ul>
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if you&#8217;re more likely to eat sweet things
</li>
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the likelihood that you’ll overeat
</li>
<li dir="ltr">
how your body responds to <a href="https://www.23andme.com/topics/wellness/caffeine-consumption/">caffeine</a>
</li>
<li dir="ltr">
your sensitivity to lactose (the type of sugar found in milk)
</li>
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if you should avoid gluten
</li>
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your ability to taste Brussels sprouts and other bitter foods
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if you flush from drinking
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</ul>
Will your 23andMe results influence the way you eat? How will your Thanksgiving table look different now that you’ve investigated the genetic association with food?

The DNA of Thanksgiving

Amy’s story begins: “Once upon a dime…”
And then, as she says, “It just gets weirder.”<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-19797 size-medium" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Amy_K_Marshall_2012-300x277.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="277" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Amy_K_Marshall_2012-300x277.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Amy_K_Marshall_2012-768x708.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Amy_K_Marshall_2012-880x811.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Amy_K_Marshall_2012.jpg 1022w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Amy, a writer and director of a small library in an Alaskan fishing village, always knew she’d been adopted. That wasn’t news. But her birth story certainly was.
Amy came into this world on November 16, 1964. Mr. and Mrs. A.T. House found her before dawn lying on the floor of the “Grover Bungalow Launderette” at Baker and 19th Street in Lawrence, Kansas. Amy had been left on an old white blanket. Near her was a pay phone with a dime left on top.
“Apparently so somebody could call the minute the child was found,&#8221; Police Lt. Dick Stanwich told the local paper at the time.
All this was news to Amy. She shared with us her unbelievable story and how she is using 23andMe to help fill in some of the blank pages in her life.
Now with children of her own, she peeked into this chapter for the first time on Christmas Eve of 2012 when she opened up a parcel that arrived that day from the Kansas State Department of Vital Statistics. This early Christmas gift was her original birth certificate.
“I had been adopted in 1965 by two wonderful people, but I had always wondered about my &#8220;real&#8221; name,” Amy said. “We stared at that envelope for quite awhile. Then I opened it. And, what I found broke my heart.”
Like a lot of adoptees, she had fantasies about her birth parents and how they might have reluctantly given up their child at the hospital with a kiss to the forehead. But seeing the birth certificate, with parents listed as “unknown,” and learning she’d been abandoned at a Laundromat pained her greatly. She immediately wanted to know more.
“I telephoned the launderette, which still exists, and left a message that began with: ‘Hi, this is going to be the weirdest phone call you&#8217;ve ever received&#8230;’&#8221;
Amy also called the local newspaper, the small but well-respected Lawrence World-Journal. She was lucky to find a helpful reporter who looked through the newspapers archive and found a few old clips that documented her arrival into this world.
A photo of one of the nurses holding her was on the front page with the headline:<a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=CUMyAAAAIBAJ&amp;sjid=PuYFAAAAIBAJ&amp;pg=3884%2C4105340"> “New Infant Found At Launderette.”</a> The next day she was again page one with the story:<a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=CkMyAAAAIBAJ&amp;sjid=PuYFAAAAIBAJ&amp;pg=5020%2C4207773"> “Amy Getting Plenty of Care.”</a>
Everything in those articles was news to Amy. She never knew.
“On Christmas Day, I called my parents and told them I&#8217;d received my pre-adoption birth certificate,” Amy said. “There was a prolonged silence followed by my mom&#8217;s voice. ‘Oh.’ Then, there was more silence. Then: ’And what did you find out?’”
She told her mom what she learned. There was more silence on the line.
“‘But, you knew that story,’” Amy told her mom.
Yes, her mom protested but: “I didn&#8217;t know THE NAME of the launderette!&#8221;
&#8220;’Mom!’&#8221; Amy said laughing.
“Then, I could tell she was crying,” Amy said.
Her parents had kept the name the nurses had given her and then she told Amy:
“‘We didn&#8217;t care where you came from! We never wanted you to feel unloved or unwanted because we loved you and wanted you so badly!’”
Amy knew how lucky she’d been to be adopted by her mom and dad, but she still had questions. The Lawrence World Journal reporter Chad Lawhorn had forwarded her the old articles and then wrote up her story. She hoped someone would come forward with information about her birth parents.
But the stories of her birth also gave her comfort too. She’d been surrounded by love and cared for by strangers.
“My world became a little warmer, and tragic,” she said.
Amy learned the name of the attending physician that night, Dr. Godwin, and found out he was still alive. The reporter called him. Dr. Godwin remembered Amy.
“Just a couple of months ago, I was thinking of her,” Godwin told the reporter. “I wondered what ever became of that baby. This is good because that has sort of hung over me for a while.”
Although the couple who found her had passed away, their children were still alive and they knew her story. She talked to their daughter, Debbie House. Debbie told Amy more details that left her speechless.
Amy had been found on the exact one-year anniversary of Debbie’s grandfather Wallace Grover’s death. He died in the morning of a heart attack in the exact spot where Amy was found.
“A year to the day. Maybe even to the hour,” said Amy. “And here, Wallace&#8217;s daughter walks into the Laundromat on the anniversary of her father&#8217;s death in the place and finds &#8230; a crying baby.”
The details she’d gleaned up to that point told her so much, but she decided to test for 23andMe to learn health and ancestry information that couldn’t be found in paper records.
One of her<a href="https://www.23andme.com/ancestry/relfinder/"> DNA Relative</a> matches sent her an enigmatic note “nice to meet you. I may have the answer to your Lawrence connection.&#8221; That helped her find a surname that she believes will help in finding out more.
“I think I&#8217;m closer than ever to figuring out who the people in the earliest moments of my life were,” said Amy.
She also feels closer to the woman who was her birth mother.
“I would love to say thank you to her. That’s the gist of it. She had choices. The mother always has choices, and she made a great choice. I hope it got better for her. I really hope she found peace. I wouldn’t want her to go through life thinking something bad happened, because it didn’t.”
Not long ago, Amy went back to Lawrence Kansas. She met with Dr. Godwin. She wanted to see the spot where she’d been found. The laundry was closed up, but she put her hand up to the glass door and it swung open. So she went in.
“It was rundown and pretty well trashed,” Amy said. “The sign on the door states that the place is being re-plumbed and will re-open &#8220;soon.&#8221; I have my doubts … but I got to see where the phone had been … and, I know this is going to sound cheesy as all get-out, but I left a note to ‘Amy&#8217;s Mom’ and taped a dime to it. It&#8217;s just a ‘Hi, I stopped by’ kind of note, but also that I wanted to leave the offer of communication open. Yeah. And then I stuck it to the bulletin board and pulled the door shut behind me.”
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.

Amy’s Story

23andMe’s popular Ancestry Composition just got a little better.
The feature estimates what percentage of your DNA comes from populations around the world, breaking down the Asian, African or European ancestry to give you insight into the <a href="https://www.23andme.com/ancestry/">geographic origins of your ancestors</a> going back many generations.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-19805 size-medium" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/African-American-Example1-300x220.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="220" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/African-American-Example1-300x220.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/African-American-Example1.jpg 661w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Customers should start seeing the update to their Ancestry Composition over the next several weeks. It will offer people with African or Asian ancestry greater detail than they had before. We added several additional reference populations – for a total of 31.
Customer’s ancestry results are broken down by region, and then subregions and then even finer detail. So for example, we may breakdown the results of someone of African Ancestry by first identifying the percentage of “Sub-Saharan African Ancestry.”
That in turn might be broken down between percentages of west, African, central and south African.
The update allows 23andMe to offer individuals with African ancestry more detail into whether their ancestors came from eastern Africa, western Africa, southern Africa or central Africa. This is similar to how 23andMe reports out data for people of European ancestry, but 23andMe is not yet able to break down African ancestry by country or tribe. We are currently working on an <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-research/23andmes-african-ancestry-project/">African Ancestry Project</a>, which we hope will ultimately improve results for people with African ancestry.
<div id="attachment_19787" style="width: 291px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-19787" class=" wp-image-19787 size-medium" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Asian-Ancestry-281x300.jpg" alt="" width="281" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Asian-Ancestry-281x300.jpg 281w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Asian-Ancestry.jpg 500w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 281px) 100vw, 281px" />An example of an Asian American&#8217;s ancestry results.</div>
Customers with Asian ancestry will get much more detail into their ancestry, breaking ancestry between eastern Asia, southeastern Asia and south Asia.
In addition the update will now provide much more detail for customers with East Asian ancestry by breaking down that ancestry among five countries – China, Japan, Korea, Mongolia and eastern Russia (people with Yakut ancestry).
23andMe is conservative in making ancestry assignments, so in many cases we may list a certain percentage of a customer’s results as “non-specific” to a particular region. A customer’s results may include a certain percent of “Non-Specific Northern European” ancestry, for example.
That simply means that while 23andMe has identified the broader region of their ancestry, we do not have enough information to be able to predict the country of origin for that ancestry. We do offer customers the opportunity to select a more “speculative estimate,” which can sometimes give them more detail.

23andMe Makes More Improvements to Ancestry Features

23andMe will soon be genotyping customers with a newly designed custom microarray chip.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-6586 size-medium" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/23andMe_Logo_blog-300x300.jpg" alt="an image of 23andMe's logo" width="300" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/23andMe_Logo_blog-300x300.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/23andMe_Logo_blog-150x150.jpg 150w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/23andMe_Logo_blog-271x271.jpg 271w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/23andMe_Logo_blog.jpg 350w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
The new version – along with completion of additional lab space – will ultimately improve both the efficiency and speed by which we will be able to process samples and then return genetic data to our customers.
<h6>Custom Chip</h6>
Unlike previous changes to our chip, this new version, dubbed v4, consists of a fully custom panel of probes for detecting <a href="https://www.23andme.com/gen101/snps/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs)</a> selected by our researchers. The selection was made to maximize the number of actionable health and ancestry features available to customers as well as offer flexibility for future research. 
Unlike previous changes to our chips, this one will not significantly alter what is reported to customers, so there would be little reason to retest on the latest platform.
The new chip includes both common variants that provide genome-wide coverage and <a href="//" target="_blank" rel="noopener">rare variants.</a> Rare variants are found in certain medically relevant genes and exons. Researchers also ensured that the chip covers SNPs with known disease associations. In addition the chip has variants that are known to be involved with drug metabolism and side effects.
<h6>The New V-4 Chip</h6>
In addition, v4 includes SNPs that our researchers use to <a href="https://www.23andme.com/ancestry/techniques/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">assign genetic ancestry.</a> They use autosomal DNA markers as well as variants in both mitochondrial DNA and in the Y chromosome. The custom chip will also allow our researchers to better impute many variants present on larger chips. Imputation is a powerful statistical method allowing researchers to fill in missing data.
Researchers use publicly available full-sequence data and 23andMe&#8217;s own data to impute the genotype at specific locations.
The new chip was designed to be compatible with all our current features. However there may be some small differences in some reports. 23andMe will inform our customers of those differences in community posts.
If you haven&#8217;t seen it already, the video below fills you in on how a sample is processed at the lab.
<iframe loading="lazy" title="23andMe DNA Processing Lab Video" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Enn3BHE3v4s?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>

23andMe’s New Custom Chip

In a flurry of appearances over the course of a few days earlier this month, 23andMe’s CEO Anne Wojcicki articulated again the role personal genetics will play in health care, and what it might mean to have not just a million people genotyped, but millions.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-19715 size-medium" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Most-Daring-CEO-300x175.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="175" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Most-Daring-CEO-300x175.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Most-Daring-CEO-768x447.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Most-Daring-CEO-1024x597.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Most-Daring-CEO-880x513.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Most-Daring-CEO-1180x687.jpg 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Most-Daring-CEO.jpg 1629w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
“A million people walking around with their genomes, I believe, is going to be disruptive to the health care system,” she said on <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/news/23andmes-daring-ceo-on-cbs/">CBS This Morning last Thursday</a>.
That disruption is a good thing, she said. By giving people access to their genetic information and insight into their own health, individuals – with the advice of their their doctors – can take more informed measures in keeping themselves healthy. That’s a change to a system that traditionally waits until someone is sick to take action, Anne said.
On the Fox Business program The Willis Report, Anne – along with Emily Drabant Conley, PhD, 23andMe’s business development manager – explained how offering people access to their personal genetic information will help give them “a roadmap” for better health. This can  alert individuals to their risks for disease and focus them and their physicians on the best plan for prevention.
Anne talked about this again on <a href="http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000215804">CNBC’s On The Money with Maria Bartiromo</a>, where the host said the $99 test, “makes health and access to the data much more democratic.”
A day before her appearance on CBS, Anne said something similar at the<a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/3021310/most-creative-people/fixing-healthcaregov-is-the-least-of-it-when-it-comes-to-fixing-health-"> Innovation Uncensored conference</a>, hosted by Fast Company.
Empowering patients with their 23andMe results can help individuals prevent disease by alerting them to a risk beforehand. And, she said, health care reform – with its emphasis on controlling costs and prevention – will also push this change.
&#8220;Healthcare reform will mean we&#8217;re all more invested in keeping people healthy,&#8221; she said.
Beyond that, 23andMe’s   model also has the power to transform research. By leveraging the power of the Internet, 23andMe’s model enlists individuals in the research process. It offers people a chance to participate, and help in research they believe is important, while also giving them something in return – access to their own results.  This has sped up the research, and helped create communities focused on certain diseases. The data 23andMe gathers is also a resource for researchers, or as <a href="http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/11/11/for-99-eliminating-the-mystery-of-pandoras-genetic-box/?_r=1">she said to The New York Times</a>:
“We’re creating a resource for humanity and we don’t want to be the only ones who are getting access to it. As many people as possible should get access to that data,” she said.
Having a million people genotyped, or millions of people, also offers a huge opportunity to gain more insight into not just the genetics behind disease, but the genetics of good health.
&#8220;There&#8217;s a power in having big data,” she said.

23andMe In The News

Maybe you’re planning to sport a <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-19752 size-full" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/23andMe_Movember_FINAL.jpg" alt="" width="1300" height="1000" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/23andMe_Movember_FINAL.jpg 1300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/23andMe_Movember_FINAL-300x231.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/23andMe_Movember_FINAL-768x591.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/23andMe_Movember_FINAL-1024x788.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/23andMe_Movember_FINAL-880x677.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/23andMe_Movember_FINAL-1180x908.jpg 1180w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1300px) 100vw, 1300px" />
It’s “No Shave November,” also known as <a href="http://us.movember.com/">Movember</a>, a time where many a man gives their razors a rest and grow a moustache to raise awareness for prostate cancer and other male cancers.
Here at 23andMe we’re a little scruffier than normal, but it’s all for the cause. We want to see what you’ve got on your upper lip, so show us your ‘stache and follow the conversation on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/23andMe">Facebook</a> or <a href="https://twitter.com/23andMe">Twitter</a>.

23andMovember

Some people gather in book clubs to chat over plot twists in the latest novel they’ve read, but Susan Clark and her friends meet in a cozy room off the kitchen at the Sea Ranch Lodge on the rugged coast of Northern California to talk about the twists and turns in their own DNA.
“It’s been a real bonding experience,” said Susan, an architectural historian. “This is something that’s just totally new, that also has a real social element to it. None of us are experts. Most of us have some sort of advanced degree, but we’re babies at this.”
<div id="attachment_19693" style="width: 300px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-19693" class="wp-image-19693 size-medium" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Sea-Ranch-Group-290x300.jpg" alt="" width="290" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Sea-Ranch-Group-290x300.jpg 290w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Sea-Ranch-Group-768x795.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Sea-Ranch-Group-989x1024.jpg 989w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Sea-Ranch-Group-850x880.jpg 850w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Sea-Ranch-Group-1140x1180.jpg 1140w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Sea-Ranch-Group.jpg 1383w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 290px) 100vw, 290px" />Clockwise from top right, Doug Patterson, Morgan Lambert, Kalynn Oleson, the group discussing their results, Sharon Albert and Susan Clark.</div>
<h2>Shared Experience</h2>
Susan and her friends started exploring personal genetics about a year ago. She and her husband read an article about 23andMe and decided to try it. Their results came in just as they were on a short vacation with two other couples in Mexico.
“We were so excited by the volume and variety of information that we couldn’t stop talking about it,” she said. That’s what got the other couples interested.”
It didn’t stop there.
<h2>Uncovering Stories</h2>
When they returned, Susan and Tom talked so much about their ancestry and health results that other people in the tight-knit community decided to get tested. Sea Ranch is a beautiful but relatively isolated enclave on the coast, and the people who live there – many of them retired – rely on each other for a lot. They gather frequently for different activities, from wine tasting to bridge to salon discussions and writing groups. This became another interest in drawing them together. Susan soon found herself at the center of discussions about genetics.
“We’d joke about our Neanderthal percentage, claiming that we now had an excuse for our bad behavior,” she said.
Or they’d support each other on more severe issues about potential health risks.
<h2>Health Data</h2>
Sharon Albert, one of Susan’s friends at Sea Ranch who’d tested after finding 23andMe on her own, was always anxious about looking at her risk for Alzheimer’s disease. (Customers can choose to “unlock” their results for Alzheimer’s or leave them locked and unopened.)
Susan told Sharon: “Let’s sit down on a Friday afternoon with a stiff drink and look together.”
That’s what they did, and fortunately, Sharon didn’t have any of the variants associated with higher risk. In fact, Sharon jokingly said her results were “kind of boring. There’s nothing wrong with me.”
But for Sharon, the lack of any big genetic risks felt empowering.
“For me, it turned things around,” she said.
Instead of looking for something in her genetics that explains away health issues or other things, she’s looking at how she lives her life.
“It made me realize that I’m in control of my health,” she said.
<h2>Starting a Conversation</h2>
Now, she’s quantifying much of what she does. She monitors her sleep, her diet, and how much exercise she gets each day. She’s controlling her own fate, she said.
At first, it was just Susan, Sharon, and one or two others who’d bring their iPads and laptops to the lodge to discuss their 23andMe results over coffee, but not for long. The group quickly grew to six and then ten. At one point, a waitress serving breakfast got sucked into a conversation and was so intrigued she eventually got tested. Soon, the group began having regularly scheduled meetings.
During their meetings, they discuss what they’ve discovered about themselves or offer insights from articles they’ve read on the latest genetic discoveries.
Sometimes, what they talk about is just for fun. Sometimes it’s serious. Sometimes, it’s just plain fascinating.
Morgan Lambert learned, to his surprise, that he had hidden African ancestry.
<div id="attachment_19694" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-19694" class="wp-image-19694 size-medium" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/group-shot-300x286.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="286" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/group-shot-300x286.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/group-shot-768x731.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/group-shot-1024x975.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/group-shot-880x838.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/group-shot-1180x1124.jpg 1180w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Sharon, standing, and Susan discussing their 23andMe results.</div>
“I don’t have any obvious African features, so I was intrigued,” said Morgan, who asked 23andMe if maybe there was a mistake.
There wasn’t.
For the retired Marin County school superintendent, the results offered him a connection to a father he’d never known.
“A way to learn a little about who he was,” Morgan said.
<h2>Family Stories</h2>
For Doug Patterson, a regular group member, the test helped him dig up a fascinating family history. It took a little legwork, but through 23andMe, he connected with a third cousin on his mother’s side of the family in Buckingham County, Virginia.
Using 23andMe’s DNA Relatives, he exchanged messages offering up information about his mother’s family, the Catletts, and his great-grandmother. He didn’t know much about her; her last name may have been “Steger” or “Steiger.” Doug learned from one of his DNA cousins that the name was “Steger” and that the Steger family had descended from Hessians, or German mercenary soldiers used by the British during the Revolutionary War. The largest prisoner-of-war camp was in Albemarle County, next door to Buckingham, and after the war, about 5,000 of these soldiers ended up settling in the colonies. He was a descendant of one of those soldiers.
“Learning this was an adventure for me,” he said.
Kalynn Oleson tested out of curiosity about her ancestry. An adoptee, she didn’t know much about her biological family, but she also didn’t feel compelled to find them.
<h2>An Adoptee&#8217;s Journey</h2>
In her career, she has worked in collections for banks and other financial institutions and is good at finding people. It wouldn’t have been difficult for her to find her biological mother. Although her name was on her birth certificate, she never tried to contact her.
“I never felt the need to,” said Kalynn. “I also figured I’d be intruding.”
Although Kalynn was born in Washington, her biological family’s roots were in Michigan. Her biological mother had been in Washington State during WWII to work as a nurse when she became pregnant. Although Kalynn never felt she needed to connect to her biological family when she was younger, she wanted to know more about her ancestry as she grew older.
“But I was cautious,” she said.
She had basic information about her mother, but that’s it. She tested with 23andMe and very quickly learned she had two half brothers, one of whom passed away within a few weeks of her discovering his existence. The other she recently wrote a letter to.
“It was tortuous to write,” she said.
How do you explain to someone that they have a 67-year-old half-sister they never knew they had? However, these new contacts taught Kalynn that her grandfather and grandmother had come from Purmo, Finland.
For Susan, who started all this, each of the stories from her friends has given her a chance to understand more about genetics and the potential for learning more about yourself. She’s also discovered that sometimes what might appear insignificant for others—a slightly increased risk for some health condition or a distant cousin match—can be very important for you if it concerns your own results.
“It has also given me a chance to be proactive regarding my health risks,” she said.
She learned that she has a risk for deep vein thrombosis, something for which she had no family history.
“But since I received the results, I am far more conscientious about getting out of my seat and moving around on a plane. It&#8217;s a small, simple act, but for me, it might prevent what could be a big problem.”

23andMe Friends Club

Late last month, Goldman Sachs hosted their second annual Builders + Innovators Summit bringing together some of the most dynamic entrepreneurs of the day to discuss what they’ve learned to make their companies successful.
As part of that conference, Goldman named 23andMe’s CEO Anne Wojcicki as one of its 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs. Those business leaders on the list were also featured in videos in which they share their insights and stories.
Check out Anne’s video below and take a look at <a href="http://www.goldmansachs.com/our-thinking/our-conferences/builders-and-innovators-2013/index.html">the other entrepreneurs who were named to the list</a>.
<iframe loading="lazy" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/KIMzFWsB5v4" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>

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