By Thao Do, PhD., 23andMe’s Education and Academia Program Manager
This year, 23andMe has organized and participated in dozens of educational events to connect with thousands of students and educators across the United States. We want to meet the students and professors in person, visit their schools, explore available resources, and experience first-hand the challenges that they face. These experiences help us develop the strategy for 23andMe’s Education Program.
Our most recent community outreach effort was an education, speaking, and listening tour through Virginia, Maryland, and Washington D.C. with an international athlete, Jonathon “JP” Prince. 
To raise awareness of 23andMe’s Education Program we sponsored JP as over the last four months as he ran from California to New York City  “Forest Gump” style. Throughout his route, he visited local universities, sharing his own personal DNA story, and handing out free DNA kits. 
<div id="attachment_25940" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-25940" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/JaDAl1Z8hhBGEXAKhs-eAvSoTHujRRsCZ67QA9w6mm67U_WJwXvOOKaTnSY8yzLupBWS38nuUdpBqBxN9ggwU5Y-lXm6K7vqLPuRombshz6zC_w0uUruliItAAw27OoNKHRnxlIr-1024x768.png" alt="" class="wp-image-25940 size-large" width="1024" height="768" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/JaDAl1Z8hhBGEXAKhs-eAvSoTHujRRsCZ67QA9w6mm67U_WJwXvOOKaTnSY8yzLupBWS38nuUdpBqBxN9ggwU5Y-lXm6K7vqLPuRombshz6zC_w0uUruliItAAw27OoNKHRnxlIr-1024x768.png 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/JaDAl1Z8hhBGEXAKhs-eAvSoTHujRRsCZ67QA9w6mm67U_WJwXvOOKaTnSY8yzLupBWS38nuUdpBqBxN9ggwU5Y-lXm6K7vqLPuRombshz6zC_w0uUruliItAAw27OoNKHRnxlIr-300x225.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/JaDAl1Z8hhBGEXAKhs-eAvSoTHujRRsCZ67QA9w6mm67U_WJwXvOOKaTnSY8yzLupBWS38nuUdpBqBxN9ggwU5Y-lXm6K7vqLPuRombshz6zC_w0uUruliItAAw27OoNKHRnxlIr-768x576.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/JaDAl1Z8hhBGEXAKhs-eAvSoTHujRRsCZ67QA9w6mm67U_WJwXvOOKaTnSY8yzLupBWS38nuUdpBqBxN9ggwU5Y-lXm6K7vqLPuRombshz6zC_w0uUruliItAAw27OoNKHRnxlIr-880x660.png 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/JaDAl1Z8hhBGEXAKhs-eAvSoTHujRRsCZ67QA9w6mm67U_WJwXvOOKaTnSY8yzLupBWS38nuUdpBqBxN9ggwU5Y-lXm6K7vqLPuRombshz6zC_w0uUruliItAAw27OoNKHRnxlIr-1180x885.png 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/JaDAl1Z8hhBGEXAKhs-eAvSoTHujRRsCZ67QA9w6mm67U_WJwXvOOKaTnSY8yzLupBWS38nuUdpBqBxN9ggwU5Y-lXm6K7vqLPuRombshz6zC_w0uUruliItAAw27OoNKHRnxlIr.png 1600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />JP and Thao on a pit stop during their campus tour.</div>
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JP’s love for his mother inspired him to make this North America DNA Vol. RUN #TheHumanRace./For most of her life, JP’s mom, who was adopted, didn’t feel as if she belonged anywhere. After using the 23andMe she discovered DNA relatives, and experienced a connection she never had before, JP said. So touched by her emotional reaction, JP dedicates his cross-country run to her with a mission to “champion unity, hope, respect and love for Americans and its global neighbors. “
I joined JP on one segment of this journey. We visited ten campuses: Hampton University, Virginia Commonwealth University, George Washington University, Northern Virginia Community College, Howard University, Georgetown University, University of Maryland, George Mason University, Virginia Tech, Radford University, in three states and seven cities in seven days.
We traveled in a colorful 23-chromosomes/DNA-wrapped sprinter van and delivered DNA talks in classes and auditoriums in front of hundreds of students, administrators, professors, department heads, and deans. We facilitated impromptu group discussions about genetics and diversity and inclusion. We shared lots of hugs, fist bumps, selfies, and connected with students, heart-to-heart.
Our stories complement each other marking two sides of any DNA journey — my story was about how genetics could influence the future of science and research, while JP shared his mother’s emotional human story. I wasn’t the only one from 23andMe who got to journey alongside JP, a  few months earlier, Jacquie Haggarty, 23andMe’s associate counsel also joined in on the fun. She flew to Alabama, ran several miles along I-85 with JP, and gave DNA kits and talked to students at Auburn University.
JP’s journey along with many of our other community outreach events has inspired a new <a href="https://education.23andme.org/genetics-club/">Genetics Club campaign</a>. Students can apply to the Genetics Club to let us know that they are starting a club at their school. To make it all a little funner, 23andMe will send each club a jumbo box of T-shirts and stickers. We are also sharing a magazine, written by students, for students and all about genetics called the DNA Decoder. 
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Thao Do

23andMe Education Speaking and Listening Tour

Our customers often share their stories with us, which are both moving and motivating as we get to see the real impact 23andMe results can have in people’s lives.
One such story came in recently from Bev Glaspey of Lake Placid, Florida. Bev called it her ‘Family Christmas Story,’ because it was about the best kind of present, a gift of family.
This is their story.
<div id="attachment_25935" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-25935" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/IMG_1636-e1513622666512-1024x609.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-25935 size-large" width="1024" height="609" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/IMG_1636-e1513622666512-1024x609.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/IMG_1636-e1513622666512-300x179.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/IMG_1636-e1513622666512-768x457.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/IMG_1636-e1513622666512-880x524.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/IMG_1636-e1513622666512-1180x702.jpg 1180w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />At their first meeting in early December, from left to right, Florence&#8217;s half-brother Robin, her daughter Bev, and Florence.</div>
Bev’s mom, Florence Axelson was born in Chicago in 1922, and adopted when she was 1 year-old. For all of her 95 years she had almost no information about her birth family. The one exception was that back in the mid-1970s Florence applied for a passport and in the process she also had to get a copy of her birth certificate.
Getting that document also got Florence the first bit of information about her origins, her biological mother’s name. But when she tried to use that bit of information to get more details about her adoption she hit a brick wall. The records, she was told, had been destroyed in a fire.
There was little more that she had to go on, and over time life got in the way of searching. That didn’t mean it wasn’t something she thought about. In fact, all of her daughters, Bev and Bev’s two sisters, all wondered about their mother’s family. Even simple things, like what their family’s nationality was, remained unknown.
That is until Bev purchased a 23andMe kit for herself and her mom. Bev started exploring their DNA Relatives, finding cousins she never knew she had. The closest was a cousin named Cathy, who was the key to unlocking Florence’s story.
Cathy&#8217;s mom, who is still alive, is Florence’s half-sister.
“Mom found out she was the firstborn child to a young unwed mother,” Bev said.
She learned that she didn’t just have one half sibling, but her biological mother had 12 children in all, three of her half-sisters and one half-brother are still living.
Florence was able to talk to two of her half sisters, and then at 95 she was able to meet her half brother Robin and his wife Kim for the first time when he came in early December to visit her at her assisted living facility.
“I was able to find mom’s birth mother’s family,” Bev said. “This has been a wonderful gift to our family. “

23andMe Blog

23andMe Blog Team

One Family’s 23andMe Christmas Story

Every day for 55 years, Ida Pollack thought about her baby, wondering if she’d made a mistake in letting him go.
As she’d told the Omaha Herald recently, she always asked herself the same thing: “Did I make the right decision?’”
Now she finally has the answer thanks to 23andMe.
A few weeks ago Ida, and the son she raised Travis, met her first born, Barrie Bode, who Ida gave up for adoption as a frightened 19 year-old.
The meeting in New York City gave Ida the peace of mind that even though giving him up was hard it was the right thing to do.
“I was glad I did after I met him and found out what kind of life he had. He had wonderful parents,” she said.
<div id="attachment_25930" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-25930" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/LMW0670-e1513285850598-1024x560.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-25930 size-large" width="1024" height="560" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/LMW0670-e1513285850598-1024x560.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/LMW0670-e1513285850598-300x164.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/LMW0670-e1513285850598-768x420.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/LMW0670-e1513285850598-880x481.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/LMW0670-e1513285850598-1180x645.jpg 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/LMW0670-e1513285850598-271x149.jpg 271w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/LMW0670-e1513285850598-372x204.jpg 372w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/LMW0670-e1513285850598-574x315.jpg 574w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Family gathering for the first time in New York City. From Left to right, Barrie Bodie, his son Alex, Travis and Ida. </div>
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Their story isn’t just about Ida, but about Barrie and his brother Travis. Coming together in New York just before Thanksgiving was the culmination of months of talking and emails between Travis and Barrie.
They’d been able to find each because Barrie’s son had used 23andMe and so had Travis. Alex and Travis matched on the DNA Relatives tool as predicted first cousins — Travis and Barrie are biological half brothers.
When he first saw the match, Travis was a bit confused.
“I know all my first cousins,” he said, but he didn’t know who Alex was.
But Travis also knew that first cousins can share a similar amount of DNA as a nephew or half nephew. And he knew that his mother had given up a baby for adoption when she was a teenager. So Travis called her and asked her about the baby’s date of birth. So when Travis finally connected with Alex, he knew what to ask. “Was your dad adopted?” And “what is his date of birth?”
The dates matched his mother’s first born. Travis figured out that Alex’s father, Barrie, was his brother, and his mother’s first born.
The two connected talking on the phone for hours. For Ida the news took a little time to settle in, but soon they were making plans to meet in person.
For Barrie, who over the decades had made efforts to find his biological family, meeting his mother was a bit overwhelming. Like a lot of adoptees, he wasn’t even sure his biological parents would want to meet him.
“You always have that fear that the person might not want you to find them,” Barrie told the Omaha World Herald.
In this case, Ida and Travis welcomed him and his son Alex with open arms. For Ida meeting her son has opened a new chapter in her life.
“It’s something you’ve been thinking about your whole life, and suddenly it’s the beginning of another story,” she said.
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A Family Reunited Using 23andMe

It takes a village to do research. Scientific discoveries from the 23andMe Research Team are made possible by our three million research participants and academic collaborators. Jey McCreight, Ph.D., a research communications scientist for 23andMe, sat down with Abraham Palmer, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry and vice chair for basic research at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, to talk more about our recent collaboration on delay discounting that was <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-017-0032-x">published in Nature Neuroscience</a>. 

What is Delay Discounting?
Jey McCreight: What is delay discounting, and what inspired you to study this particular trait?
Abraham Palmer: I have wanted to study delay discounting, which tends to favor small immediate rewards over larger delayed rewards since I was an undergraduate. The concept resonates with me because being able to work for a larger delayed reward is so critical to the survival of many animals, including humans. The idea that pigeons, for example, are calculating, in real-time, the value of a delayed reward is amazing. We do it too. Some of it clearly is at the conscious level, but I’m convinced that people also have innate differences that are due to genetic factors. So this is a trait that impacts health, but it is also an important concept in microeconomics.
<div id="attachment_25919" style="width: 209px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-25919" class="wp-image-25919 size-medium" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Abraham-Palmer-photo-199x300.jpg" alt="" width="199" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Abraham-Palmer-photo-199x300.jpg 199w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Abraham-Palmer-photo-768x1156.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Abraham-Palmer-photo-680x1024.jpg 680w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Abraham-Palmer-photo-585x880.jpg 585w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Abraham-Palmer-photo-784x1180.jpg 784w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Abraham-Palmer-photo.jpg 1063w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 199px) 100vw, 199px" />Prof. Abraham Palmer</div>
From a practical perspective, I’m excited to use these and future results to identify specific genes. Part of my lab works on human genetics, and part of it works on mice and rats. If we can identify genes using human genome-wide association studies (GWAS), we can study them in rodents, where we can also measure delay discounting. That allows us to understand how those genes influence delay discounting, which is hard or impossible to do in humans.  
JM: But mice can’t exactly fill out a survey like a 23andMe research participant, can they? 
AP: Ha, yes, the whole field of behavioral neuroscience is based on elaborate methods that circumvent the fact that we can’t just ask a mouse how it is feeling or whether it wants 0.8 ml of water now or 1.6 ml of water in 72 seconds. If we gave them a paper survey, they’d sniff it for a few minutes, shred it, and make a nest out of it!
<h2>Studying Humans</h2>
JM: What are the benefits of using a cohort of humans versus a mouse model? Disadvantages?
AP: The problem with people is that they are too damn smart. So they might see these questions as about current interest rates, their expectations about the return on their investments, or similar financial issues. Or they might have a cultural bias that waiting is always better. Those factors obscure the “innate” genetic differences that we are trying to study.
But a really nice thing about humans is that they are so damn smart. We can ask them these questions in a minute or two. With rodents, we have to spend a couple of weeks “teaching” them how to answer these questions. Also, rodent studies do use a real reward, typically water or food, and demand for those rewards might change from subject to subject, or over the course of a session, or between sessions. But rodents don’t have bank accounts and don’t know what the prime interest rate is. They’ve also been raised in very uniform environments, which minimizes variability due to environmental factors. In <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23710681">a paper written by Jerry Richards</a>, we estimated that the heritability of delay discounting was about 60 percent. (A bit of trivia: Jerry is the one who first got me interested in delay discounting when I was an undergrad and he was a postdoc in Lew Seiden’s lab at The University of Chicago).
One of my concerns is that delay discounting in humans may or may not be similar to delay discounting in rodents. There are many differences, including the abstract “reward” offered to humans versus the food or water “reward” offered to rodents. Another issue is the timescale: we’d never be able to train rodents to wait days weeks or months for a reward, and I’ll bet that they wouldn’t wait that long even if they understood the question. I think that their time horizon is much shorter than ours.
So that raises a question: are decisions about abstract rewards months away really equivalent to a behavioral paradigm in which a rat chooses between water now or more water in 72 seconds? Quite frankly, no one knows; there is pharmacological and neuroanatomical evidence to support the model, but I think questions remain. I hope to tackle those questions in the coming years, and these results will benefit that effort.
<h2>Genetics of Behavior Traits</h2>
JM: What do we generally know about the genetics of behavior and personality traits? How heritable are they compared to other traits or diseases?
AP: My postdoc Sandra Sanchez-Roige and I just finished <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29152902">a review of the genetics of personality</a>, so this information is fresh in my mind. Twin studies using various personality traits suggest heritability in the ~40 percent range. SNP heritability is estimated more like 5-18 percent (SNP heritability is expected to be lower).
JM: What are the benefits of using GWAS to investigate behavioral traits? Are there any limitations?
AP: I think of behavioral genetics as a broad field that includes diseases and also normal variation, which may contribute to disease in extreme cases. Personality provides a continuous (rather than case:control) measure, and can be studied in “normal” populations, yet may provide insights into diseases. The limitations that come to mind include power (sample size) and the obvious role of environmental (including but not limited to cultural) influences.
<h2>Genetic Studies of ADHD</h2>
JM: Why is it important to look at an individual process (such as delay discounting) rather than a disease (such as ADHD)?
AP: I wouldn’t say it is an either/or proposition, but I think delay discounting can add a lot to studies of disease phenotypes. For example, ADHD can be dissected into various components; that is the goal of the <a href="https://www.nimh.nih.gov/research-priorities/rdoc/index.shtml">Research Domain Criteria initiative</a>, which is a big deal at the National Institute of Mental Health. Delay discounting is one component of ADHD, but I expect that some ADHD genes will have a big impact on delay discounting while others will not. If we know which is which, we know how to study the mechanism of those ADHD genes. That means that having data about both ADHD and delay discounting will allow us to better dissect the diseases into processes, neural pathways, and molecular mechanisms. For me, that is the goal of doing GWAS in the first place.
<h2>Big Data</h2>
JM: What advantages does the size and variety of 23andMe’s dataset offer a researcher? Did it help speed up the work you were doing or allow you to research something you couldn’t otherwise?
AP: Well, size matters a lot. 23andMe was able to collect phenotypes from 23,217 subjects in about four months. That’s fantastic. My lab has none of the infrastructure needed for that scale of data collection. Having genotypes already available was also key, and the research participants were willing to do this work on a volunteer basis, which meant a lot to me.
JM: One can imagine that financial security plays a large part in an individual’s ability to delay receiving a reward &#8211; do you control for this?
AP: We had hoped to include socioeconomic status (SES) as a covariate, but because 23andMe only had that data for a fraction of the subjects we decided not to. If we had to exclude research participant for which we had no SES data, it would have reduced our sample size by about 25 percent. However, one advantage of doing this project with 23andMe was that we knew that research participants were reasonably affluent; for example, they could afford to pay to have themselves genotyped, which is a sign that they are not living “hand to mouth.”
In other cohorts/populations, this is a major concern. For example, someone who is a drug addict might urgently need the smaller amount of money that is available now because they need to buy more drugs. Moreover, Carl Hart from Columbia once pointed out that delay discounting may also measure how much the subject trusts the researcher to give them money later. If you have learned that you can’t trust other people to make good on their commitments, or if you don’t find the scientists trustworthy, you might assume there was a degree of risk in waiting for a delayed reward. So, delay discounting may measure different things, depending on the population used. I saw 23andMe as an advantage because these factors were less likely to be in play, but also possibly a limitation because highly impulsive people might not be well represented because they might be less likely to join 23andMe in the first place.
<h2>Impulsivity</h2>
JM: How accurate are self-reported measures of delay discounting compared to direct measures of the behavior? Do people overestimate their ability to wait for greater rewards because of how “impulsivity” is perceived?
AP: That is a great question. When designing this project, I wanted to include some tasks intended to measure impulsivity. These can be implemented as Java applets, allowing us to measure behavior directly. I still hope to do that study one day. We considered trying to test behavior by telling the research participants that one of their decisions would have real consequences; that is, they would actually get $10 now or $20 in three months. Other papers have suggested that this has little effect on people&#8217;s answers, which made us think we could forgo giving any real rewards. In hindsight, I’m glad we did because giving ten dollars (or more) to 23,217 people would have been expensive!
<h2>A Sex Bias?</h2>
JM: Your most significant SNP was on the X chromosome. Do you think this is why women tend to show more delay in discounting than men?
AP: I wouldn’t read too much into that. Although it was the most significant finding, that locus has a very small overall effect. I was surprised when we saw that women in this cohort put less value on future rewards. I panicked when I first saw that because I had assumed (and thought I knew) that men would discount more. So Sandra and I had this panicked evening where we thought we’d made some critical error in the data processing, but then we realized that our results were consistent with prior studies. Men are indeed more impulsive when other measures/definitions are used, but delay discounting is different for whatever reason. So all that panic was for nothing!
<h2>What&#8217;s Next?</h2>
JM: What are the next steps for your research?
AP: This is a down payment. I’m hoping that by this time next year I’ll have at least 100K genotyped subjects who have answered these questions. We are working with at least half a dozen groups already to collect that data, and we are very open to more collaborations. To be honest, I probably won’t be satisfied until I have a million. Another next step is to translate these results into rodents studies, as we just discussed. A third direction is to get more measures of impulsivity, hopefully including behavioral measures. And of course all of this requires endless grant writing, which I mostly enjoy, but I’ve been financing this project out of discretionary funds so far. Now I need to reload, and that means grants of possibly philanthropy.
JM: Where do you see the field of psychological genomics going in the future?
AP: I ask people that question all the time – what will we be talking about in five years. I don’t even ask about 10 years in the future because it is laughable; no one can predict that far in the future, the field is developing so quickly. I think digital mental health is a big deal. One aspect of digital mental health is collecting “big data” from people to monitor, predict, and possibly improve aspects of mental health. That big data, especially when it is from genotyped research participants, will be a huge resource. I suspect we could reframe questions about impulsivity by measuring aspects of behavior using smart phones or watches or credit card activity or whatever.
Another huge area is the use of electronic medical records in genotyped subjects. I’ll bet that polygenic prediction of delay discounting will predict all sorts of good and bad health outcomes; we are already looking at that with Lea Davis and Nancy Cox and others at Vanderbilt University. Of course every year more and more people will be whole genome sequenced, which will allow us to examine rare variants and their impact on all phenotypes. Model systems, both using whole animals and cellular systems, will be extremely important in realizing the promise of molecular insights from GWAS. In terms of how this will impact patients, I hope to see new and better drugs developed, and we all hope that drug treatments will be personalized based on an individual’s DNA.
JM: Who is the mastermind behind the science limericks on your lab webpage?
AP: Aren’t those cute? I gave a talk years ago at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign — I think Gene Robinson was the one who invited me — and they had a tradition that the audience would write limericks about the seminar. When I finished taking questions, one of the graduate students got up and read them. I was so impressed I got copies.

Abraham Palmer Discusses Collaboration with 23andMe

Some people want what they want when they want it, while others can patiently wait for a bigger and better reward later.
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, want to find out if there is a genetic basis for that and are studying what is known as ‘delay discounting’ — a tendency to overvalue immediate rewards more than future ones which can lead to impulsive behavior.
“Studying the genetic basis of delay discounting is something I’ve wanted to do for the entirety of my 20 years of research,” said senior author <a href="http://profiles.ucsd.edu/abraham.palmer">Abraham Palmer, Ph.D</a>., professor of psychiatry and vice chair for basic research at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine. “But it takes a huge number of people for a genetics study to be meaningful.”
That’s where 23andMe came in, helping Palmer and his team to gather enough data from enough people to make this research possible.
Palmer’s and other’s interest in delay discounting is in part because many studies have shown that more extreme impulsivity is also commonly found in people with a host of neuropsychiatric conditions, such as Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), major depression, smoking dependency and being overweight.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-25873" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/marshmallow-image-1024x717.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="717" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/marshmallow-image-1024x717.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/marshmallow-image-300x210.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/marshmallow-image-768x538.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/marshmallow-image-880x616.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/marshmallow-image-1180x826.jpg 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/marshmallow-image.jpg 1224w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /> 
 
The most famous example of research around delay discounting is a 50-year-old study known as the<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/09/what-the-marshmallow-test-really-teaches-about-self-control/380673/"> Stanford Marshmallow Experiment</a>. As part of the study, researchers offered children a choice of either an immediate reward — one marshmallow — or if they could hold out for 15 minutes alone in a room with the marshmallow in front of them, there’d be a bigger, better reward — two marshmallows. The researchers later followed up with these children to look at different measures of success and found that those kids who were able to hold out faired better on things like SAT scores and were less likely to be overweight.
Scientists have since learned through studies of identical and non-identical twins that “delay discounting” is strongly heritable. But little is known about its genetics, or how it might relate to these other conditions. So Prof. Palmer and his team at UC San Diego worked with 23andMe scientists on the studying and gathering data from 23andMe customers who consented to participate in research and complete a survey to measure their impulsivity. (Check out an interview we did with Prof. Palmer <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/abraham-palmer-ucsd">here</a>.)
“In less than four months, we had responses from more than 23,000 research participants,” said Pierre Fontanillas, Ph.D., a senior statistical geneticist at 23andMe. “This shows the power of our research model to quickly gather large amounts of phenotypic and genotypic data for scientific discovery.”
The first findings from this work — and the first-ever genome-wide association study of delay discounting — was published this week in the journal <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-017-0032-x">Nature Neuroscience</a>.
The study identified several genetic variants associated with delay discounting and found significant genetic correlations between delay discounting and ADHD, smoking addiction, depression, and BMI. While researchers have long know that these conditions were correlated, this is the first time that scientists have also been able to see that these are also genetically correlated, according to the paper.
The researchers said that this also highlights the advantage of this research model for the study of behavioral traits and neuropsychiatric conditions. In fact, the same team that worked on this study also recently completed a study of similar size looking at the genetic factors that contribute to alcoholism that appeared in the journal Addiction Biology.
Palmer believes a larger study with a more diverse population would yield more results.
You can find the full paper in <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-017-0032-x">Nature Neruoscience</a>.

Wait for it, new genetic research on impulsivity

Sometimes the best way to see something is to look at it from a different angle. Scientists have begun doing just that with data from genetic studies. Traditional genome-wide association studies, or GWAS, start with a phenotype of interest and find which genetic variants are associated with it. Phenome-wide association studies, or PheWAS, metaphorically turn this on its head by starting with a genetic variant and finding which phenotypes are associated with it.
<h6>Variant Targeting</h6>
A recently<a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0186405"> published paper</a> in the journal <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/">PLOS One </a>illustrates the potential of using 23andMe data in this way. By starting with a genetic variant and then sorting through hundreds of seemingly unrelated health-related phenotypes, researchers can gain insight into the genetics of some health conditions and the best ways to treat them.
For example, phenotypes identified in a PheWAS could help point to potential side effects of <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-research/23andme-and-drug-discovery/">targeting a variant</a> with a drug. With what is now the largest database in the world of genotypic and phenotypic data from people who have consented to participate in research, 23andMe is uniquely positioned for these kinds of scientific studies.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-25916" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Data-Viz-1024x576.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="576" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Data-Viz-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Data-Viz-300x169.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Data-Viz-768x432.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Data-Viz-880x495.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Data-Viz-1180x663.jpg 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Data-Viz.jpg 1366w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />

<h6>GWAS and PheWAS</h6>
Over the last decade, ever-larger genome-wide associations have uncovered a growing list of genetic variants known to influence disease. But understanding the causal roles these variants play is often difficult to discern, and that’s where PheWAS can help.
“This approach is relevant to drug discovery when a variant is known to have a functional effect, and the available traits include conditions which have been previously studied,” according to the authors of the study in PLOS One.
<h6>GSK Study</h6>
The study, done by researchers with GlaxoSmithKline and 23andMe, focused on seven genetic variants in genes in the biological pathway known as TH17, which play a role in several autoimmune and infectious diseases. The researchers took each of those genetic variants and then compared them across more than 1,200 different health-related traits for more than half a million 23andMe customers who consented to participate in research.
What the researchers found were both known and new associations,  including a regulatory variant in the RORC gene associated with allergy and asthma. This association has not been reported on before. The researchers also found associations between a variant in the TYK2 gene and several conditions such as psoriasis, Crohn’s disease, and infections. It’s this association that could help for future drug targets, according to the researchers.
The researchers noted the limits of this study, but they pointed out the potential of studies like it.
“We hope that the emergence of (Electronic Medical Records)-linked biobanks with genetic data will facilitate more routine use of the PheWAS screen providing insights into drug development strategies for targeting these genes and pathways,” the researchers concluded.

New phenome-wide association study offers insight into autoimmune diseases

In the largest genome-wide association study of its kind, an international team of researchers led by scientists at the University of Pittsburg have identified dozens of genetic associations for <a href="https://www.23andme.com/topics/traits/earlobe-type/">detached earlobes</a>, a seemingly simple trait that is much more complex than once thought and could yield insights into serious genetic conditions.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-beyond-earlobes">Beyond Earlobes</h2>



Beyond revealing more about the complex genetics behind whether a person’s earlobes are attached or not, the findings also could give insights for those working to treat genetic conditions that impact facial-cranial development.



“Sometimes the genetics of a fairly simple trait are actually quite complex,” <a href="http://www.upmc.com/media/NewsReleases/2017/Pages/shaffer-weinberg-earlobe.aspx">said lead author John R. Shaffer, Ph.D</a>., assistant professor in Pitt Public Health’s Department of Human Genetics, and the Department of Oral Biology in Pitt’s School of Dental Medicine. “By understanding that complexity, we can work toward treatments for genetic conditions, several of which have distinct facial features that involve the earlobe, including Mowat-Wilson Syndrome.”







<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="800" height="937" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Meisje_met_de_parel.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-25835" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Meisje_met_de_parel.jpg 800w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Meisje_met_de_parel-256x300.jpg 256w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Meisje_met_de_parel-768x900.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Meisje_met_de_parel-751x880.jpg 751w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" /></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-study-size">Study Size</h2>



Published in the <a href="http://www.cell.com/ajhg/fulltext/S0002-9297(17)30421-4">American Journal of Human Genetics</a>, the large-scale genetic study was an international collaboration, with contributions from investigators in the United Kingdom and China. It included data from 23andMe.



The study identified 49 different genetic associations, looking at data from a diverse group of more than 74,000 people with European, Chinese, and <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/latino-ancestry">Latino ancestry</a>. More than 65,000 of those included in the study are 23andMe customers who consented to participate in research. Those large numbers helped to dramatically increase the statistical power of this study, making it the largest genetic association study of earlobe attachment to date.



The researchers started with a smaller group of 10,000 participants and identified six genetic variants strongly associated with <a href="https://www.23andme.com/topics/traits/earlobe-type/">earlobe attachment</a>. When the analysis was broadened to include the 23andMe participants, researchers replicated those six variants along with 43 others.



&#8220;This is the unique power of 23andMe&#8217;s research platform — to quickly and easily make genetic discoveries across a wide variety of phenotypes,&#8221; said Joyce Tung, 23andMe’s vice president for research.



This kind of research can uncover &#8220;biology that might never otherwise see the light of day because it doesn&#8217;t obviously meet the priorities for research funding,” Joyce said. “And yet, important insights can still be drawn even from seemingly insignificant traits.&#8221;



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New research finds genetic association for detached earlobes

<h6>23andMe Collaborates with (RED) This Holiday</h6>
For the first time in the company’s history, 23andMe created a limited edition kit (RED)-branded genetic testing kit this holiday, to support the (RED) Non-Profit Organization’s fight to end AIDS.
“The (RED) organization has an incredible mission and believes in harnessing the power of people to help,” said Tracy Keim, vice president of Brand at 23andMe. “They know that as consumers, we all have tremendous power to impact someone else&#8217;s life with a purchase. And we were honored to be a part of their holiday (RED) initiative this year.”

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Red--1024x536.png" alt="" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-25909" width="1024" height="536" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Red--1024x536.png 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Red--300x157.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Red--768x402.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Red--880x460.png 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Red-.png 1124w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />
In the spirit of the holidays and Giving Tuesday, a total of 25,000 23andMe (RED) Health + Ancestry kits will be available for purchase through: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/b?node=17159855011">Amazon.com/RED</a>, 23andMe website and certain retail outlets. Limited edition kits will be sold now through December 31, 2017 (or until we stock out). Five percent of the purchase price of every kit will be donated to fight AIDS.
(RED) partners with the world’s most iconic brands that contribute up to 50 percent of profits from (RED)-branded goods and services to the Global Fund.
Since 2006, (RED) has generated more than $475 million for the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, to support HIV/AIDS grants in Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Rwanda, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania and Zambia. 100 percent of that money goes to work on the ground – no overhead is taken. Global Fund grants that (RED) supports have impacted more than 90 million people with prevention, treatment, counseling, HIV testing and care services.

Your DNA DISCOVE(RED)

Thanksgiving is about family. A ritual that weaves together each generation, sharing old memories, making new ones, and seeing in all that, the common heritage we share in our DNA.
A few days ago 23andMe invited about half a dozen families to come together for a holiday dinner and a chance to meet a newfound father, mother, brother or sister for the first time. 
“It’s an emotional thing for me because I always thought I was as an only child,” said Barbara Saunders, just before meeting her sisters Ida Sturgill and Joyce Randall. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/LMW0704-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-25902" width="1024" height="683" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/LMW0704-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/LMW0704-300x200.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/LMW0704-768x512.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/LMW0704-880x587.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/LMW0704-1180x787.jpg 1180w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /> The meeting in New York just before Thanksgiving was the culmination of months of talking and email after the sisters had connected using 23andMe. Now they were getting a chance to see each other for the first time.
“I have chills,” said Ida, before Barbara walked in and all three sisters hugged.
Their embrace and disbelief at seeing and touching their newfound sister were much like what rippled through each family that came together.
Standing with her son, Travis, Ida Pollock looked both excited and nervous, as she waited to meet “my son that I gave up for adoption 55 years ago.”
Barrie stood with his son, Alex, pinching himself that this was all possible. As she entered the room and their faces flushed with emotion, he uttered, “Oh my goodness,” and embraced his mom, and then his brother. 
Ida said she felt thankful. Bodie felt overwhelmed.
“To have everything come full circle like this is just beyond being thankful,” he said.
As Natosha Brown walked in and saw her biological father, William, and her four sisters and a niece, her father said he had been searching for her since he’d learned of her birth. 
“I feel like we have 36 years to make up for,” Natosha said. Smiling and crying the sisters embraced. Her father captured the feeling of everyone who was there.
“It’s a blessing and its thanksgiving, so what better time,” he said.
See more about the families that met for the first time using 23andMe <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zY7JOD4eQR0&#038;list=PLFvkfbvHpp1kU9nvguZrZ2Y7nYc8_swVA">here</a>. 
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