23andMe again turned to <a href="http://www.arianakilloran.com/about/">Ariana Killoran</a> to complete its newest book, The One And Only Me, which communicates the <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-24606" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/61JsPEOMZvL-260x300.jpg" alt="61jspeomzvl" width="260" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/61JsPEOMZvL-260x300.jpg 260w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/61JsPEOMZvL.jpg 433w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 260px) 100vw, 260px" />complicated and important science of genetics in a way that kids can understand. This is the second children’s book on genetics by Ariana, an illustrator who has worked with the company since its beginning. 
Her first book for the company, You Share Genes with Me, came out in 2013. Probably best known for her innovative and whimsical <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubq4eu_TDFc">Genetics 101</a> educational videos, Ariana sat down with us recently to discuss her work and the latest book. 


This is your second kids book on genetics. Why do an illustrated children&#8217;s book on this?


For two reasons, really: First, the world of medicine is being transformed by new genetic discoveries and increasing access to personal genetic information, yet there are very few children’s books out there that introduce genetics concepts to young children. I am a huge fan of the nonfiction picture book as a way of engaging kids in science.
Illustration, when paired with clear, concise text, is such a powerful tool for communicating complex information to any audience. And while these days you can learn just about anything online (I made a whole series of Genetics 101 videos for 23andMe a number of years ago), books are still those treasured objects that kids can linger over, immerse themselves in, and discover over and over again.
The other reason is more personal. My older daughter looks nothing like me (seriously, NOTHING like me), and exactly like her father. Ever since she was a baby, people have been unable to resist pointing out this fact to her. So she started asking me questions: Would she look just like Daddy when she grew up? Was she also related to Mommy? Could she be like Mommy in some other ways that she can’t see? Kids have their own questions about genetics and what it means for who they are and who they are going to be.
What was your goal for this book?
<div id="attachment_24605" style="width: 293px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-24605" class="wp-image-24605 size-medium" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/AK-photo1-283x300.jpg" alt="ak-photo1" width="283" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/AK-photo1-283x300.jpg 283w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/AK-photo1-768x816.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/AK-photo1-964x1024.jpg 964w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/AK-photo1-829x880.jpg 829w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/AK-photo1-1111x1180.jpg 1111w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/AK-photo1.jpg 1744w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 283px) 100vw, 283px" />Illustrator Ariana Killoran and some of her traits.</div>
To give kids the tools to answer some of their questions about genetics, and to inspire them to ask more questions and seek out more answers.


Science, and genetic science in particular, are pretty complicated, and yet you are able to communicate these concepts to kids. What&#8217;s your secret? 


I start by respecting kids as the powerful intellects that they are. To young kids, all new information is equal. There isn’t “hard” information and “easy” information. There is just new information and familiar information, information that sparks their interests, and information that doesn’t. Children are naturally curious about the world around them. It is only in high school and thereafter that we self-select into “science” and “nonscience” people. It’s then that some of us decide that we are incapable of learning whole subject areas of information.
Kids don’t have those hang-ups.
There are a zillion stories we could tell about genetics, but we have to pick just one to tell at a time, or else it becomes cluttered and noisy and impedes learning. I drive the scientists I work with crazy by cutting out all this stuff that they want to put into my book texts and video scripts.
All things can’t be equally important to every story, and I want to do the hard work of finding what is important so the reader doesn’t have to. A lot of times when writing about science for kids, adults think the key is to use folksy or cutesy names or metaphors, and sugarcoat the information to make it more palatable. But I find if you really trim down the text so that you say only what you need to say, and then create beautiful illustrations that clearly communicate the same point in a slightly different angle, you create the best conditions for learning.
Humor doesn’t hurt, either, because learning is supposed to be fun. If we give a kid a book that looks like that beloved bedtime story they curl up with every night, we are saying that within it there is  something special.


What interests you the most about genetics?

<div style="float: right; text-align: justified; width: 300px; background-color: #eee; padding: 15px; margin-left: 10px;">
23andMe&#8217;s Education Program
Ariana&#8217;s book is part of 23andMe&#8217;s broader mission to improve genetic literacy at all levels.
Both books are part of 23andMe’s broader commitment to genetics education that started with its founding and, over the last decade, has included an educational video series with Khan Academy,<a href="https://sslvpn.23andme.com/lessons/,DanaInfo=education.23andme.org,SSL+"> crowdsourced curriculum</a> for high school and college level science classes, webinars, speaking events, outreach activities, student contests, and even contributions to<a href="https://sslvpn.23andme.com/,DanaInfo=unlockinglifescode.org,SSL+explore"> a traveling museum exhibit</a> developed by the Smithsonian and National Institutes of Health.
More recently, the company established an Education Grant Program to inspire educators to create an interactive learning experience for students by integrating personal genetics into their curriculum.</div>
“Making genetics education fun and accessible has been core to our mission since we launched in 2006,” said Anne Wojcicki, 23andMe’s co-founder and CEO. “The mapping of the human genome is the most exciting scientific discovery of our lifetime, but to truly benefit from it we each need to better understand the basics of genetics. We know that there is a lot of work to do to improve genetic literacy and 23andMe will continue our commitment to science education at all levels.”

The limits of genetics are most interesting to me. I want to know more about the way our experiences and the world around us interact with our genetics to make us who we are.
As a parent of young kids, I love watching this phenomenon in action: these little people —— with some familiar looking eyes and ears and a whole bunch of other genetic bits and pieces they inherited from my husband and I —— develop into complex humans as they interact with the world around them.


Looking at your illustrations there’s a certain lightness and humor there. How would you describe your style?
Quirky, playful, at times irreverent. But I care about every character that I draw, and try to breathe some complexity into them. I am respectful of them, and I want to give viewers opportunities to connect with them.


What are the picture books that were your favorites as a kid?


The Babar books, Beatrix Potter books, Bread and Jam for Francis by Russell Hoban/Lillian Hoban, Harlequin and the Gift of Many Colors by Remy Charlip/Burton Supree, and People by Peter Spier.
You studied African history at Yale and Berkeley, how did you wind up becoming an illustrator?


Ha! A valid question. Classic Gemini? My husband used to call me “curveball” because of a particularly nutty email exchange we had while I was doing pre-dissertation research in Malawi. One day I sent him a message about how all the pieces of my project were falling into place, how I had made all these important contacts, how my language skills had progressed, and so forth. Less than 24 hours later, I sent him a message telling him I had decided to turn down my grant, leave grad school, and enroll full-time in art school to become an illustrator. I remember being really irritated when he thought I might be acting impulsively.
But I have never looked back. The truth is, I have wanted to be a book illustrator my entire life. I have never lost my love of children’s books and children’s book art.  I have always drawn, made, sculpted, built, collaged, what have you, but somehow didn’t realize it was a job I could have. Turns out being an illustrator is not only great because I get to draw all the time, but also because it requires that I constantly immerse myself in new subject areas. And, unlike the academic writing I was doing before, my illustrations let me communicate with all kinds of people, and lots of them.


You were with 23andMe at the beginning and have been involved with the company off and on through that whole time. What do you see as the biggest changes in people&#8217;s perception of genetics in that time? What do you think 23andMe&#8217;s role has been in all that?
When we started out ten years ago, the idea of personal genomics was a complete unknown for most people, myself included! The company had a ton of work to do just making people comfortable with the notion that individuals could access their genetic information and use it responsibly. There were a handful of companies on the market at the time, some more reputable and scientifically sound than others, and 23andMe worked hard to gain the trust of both consumers and the scientific community. Ten years later, many people have accepted that genetic data provides the next frontier in personalized medicine, and 23andMe is a trusted part of this change. From the very beginning, 23andMe has taken education very seriously and understood that the company has a responsibility to their customers to make sure they understand what their data is telling them. I think it is that commitment to education and transparency that has helped transform the industry into what it is today.

23andMe Blog

23andMe Blog Team

Genetics Education And The One And Only Me

Some of the dos and don’t of your annual office holiday party should be kind of obvious – don’t hit on your boss and maybe take it easy on the spiked punch – but knowing how your DNA influences how your body responds to alcohol or sweets might help you navigate the pitfalls of this year’s celebrations.
Your genetics influences how you metabolize alcohol, your preference for salty or sweet snacks, and whether your <a href="https://www.23andme.com/topics/wellness/alcohol-flush-reaction">face reddens</a> when you have a little alcohol.
“Lost in the merriment of holiday festivities is how our environment and the decisions we’re making are influenced by our genetics – and the consequence those decisions may have,” said Jeffrey Pollard, and MD and 23andMe’s director of medical affairs. “Most things we eat and drink can be enjoyed in moderation without having a harmful effect as long as you don’t overdo it.”
This year 23andMe dissected how your genetics may influences the ways your body may react to some of the choices you make at this year’s holiday office party.
Enjoy and season’s greetings. 
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-24897" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Holiday-Season-Survival-Guide-v1_US_hi-res-4.jpg" alt="holiday-season-survival-guide-v1_us_hi-res" width="1000" height="2994" />
&nbsp;

Holiday Party Genetics

Sarah Laskey, 23andMe Product Scientist
The Chromosome Painting is one of my favorite parts of the 23andMe experience because it is packed with information. Then again, it can also be a little intimidating because it shows so much all at once. In this blog post, I’ll walk through some basics of what your Chromosome Painting shows. And I&#8217;ll explain what kinds of stories it can tell you about <a href="https://www.23andme.com/dna-ancestry/">your genetic ancestry</a>.
<h6>What is a Chromosome Painting?</h6>
Your Chromosome Painting is another way of looking at your Ancestry Composition results. It shows a colorful representation of the 23 pairs of chromosomes that make up your genome. Here is a photo of what real human chromosomes look like under a microscope, side by side with my Chromosome Painting:<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-24850 size-larger" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/1_karyotype-880x464.png" alt="" width="880" height="464" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/1_karyotype-880x464.png 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/1_karyotype-300x158.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/1_karyotype-768x405.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/1_karyotype-1024x540.png 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/1_karyotype-1180x623.png 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/1_karyotype.png 1520w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 880px) 100vw, 880px" />
In the microscope photograph on the left, the chromosomes are laid out vertically. In the Chromosome Painting on the right, they’re shown as colorful horizontal bars. In both images, the chromosomes are shown in pairs and labeled with numbers (1 through 22) or the letters X and Y.
My Chromosome Painting has two copies of the X chromosome because I’m female. The picture on the left shows the genome of a biological male, who has one copy of the X chromosome and one copy of the Y chromosome. Y chromosomes aren’t shown in Chromosome Paintings.
In the Chromosome Painting, gray regions in chromosomes 13, 14, 15, 21, and 22 represent parts of the genome where 23andMe doesn’t test any markers because the DNA sequences in those regions are repetitive and hard to measure.
<h6>Exploring your genetic ancestry</h6>
In your Chromosome Painting, your genome is “painted” with colors representing up to 31 different ancestries. You can hover over or click on the different ancestries in your Chromosome Painting to learn where they’re found in your genome.
The 31 Ancestry Composition populations are organized in a hierarchy, which reflects the genetic structure of global populations. For example, Britain and Ireland are part of Northwest Europe, which is part of Europe. To see this hierarchy in action, take a closer look at my Chromosome Painting:
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-24851 size-larger" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/2_painting-880x663.png" alt="" width="880" height="663" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/2_painting-880x663.png 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/2_painting-300x226.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/2_painting-768x579.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/2_painting-1024x771.png 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/2_painting-1180x889.png 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/2_painting.png 1476w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 880px) 100vw, 880px" />
My Chromosome Painting shows genetic ancestry from several different fine-resolution populations like British &amp; Irish, French &amp; German, and Ashkenazi Jewish. But these are all sub-categories of European. When I click “European” on the right hand sidebar, my whole genome is colored in “European blue”:
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-24852 size-larger" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/3_european-880x663.png" alt="" width="880" height="663" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/3_european-880x663.png 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/3_european-300x226.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/3_european-768x579.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/3_european-1024x771.png 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/3_european-1180x889.png 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/3_european.png 1476w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 880px) 100vw, 880px" />
What can you do with your own high-resolution picture of the Ancestry Composition on each of your chromosomes? You can click on the different populations to understand how they relate to each other and where they’re found in your genome. You also can talk to family members (or connect with them on 23andMe) to learn which branches of your family contributed which parts of your genetic ancestry.
<h6>One segment, two segment, red segment, blue segment</h6>
The colors in your Chromosome Painting tell you about your Ancestry Composition, but you can learn even more by looking at the number and length of the DNA segments assigned to each ancestry. Everyone inherits half of their DNA from their mother and half from their father. When DNA is passed from parents to their children, the two chromosomes in each pair are randomly shuffled together in a process called recombination.
This process breaks up long segments of a single ancestry into shorter segments. Sometimes very short segments of ancestry are lost during recombination and don’t get passed to the next generation. This is why ancestry from your distant ancestors only shows up in a few short segments of your genome, if at all.
The technical term for the genetic mixing of previously separate populations is admixture. If you have different DNA segments painted with different colors in your Chromosome Painting, those are evidence of admixture in your genetic history. Take a look at these two Chromosome Paintings side by side:
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-24853 size-larger" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/4_sarah-antonio-white-880x498.png" alt="" width="880" height="498" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/4_sarah-antonio-white-880x498.png 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/4_sarah-antonio-white-300x170.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/4_sarah-antonio-white-768x435.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/4_sarah-antonio-white-1024x579.png 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/4_sarah-antonio-white-1180x668.png 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/4_sarah-antonio-white.png 1944w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 880px) 100vw, 880px" />
<h6>Every Chromosome Painting Tells a Story</h6>
These Chromosome Paintings show very different genetic histories, and not just because of their Ancestry Compositions! Even if we ignore the colors themselves, the two pictures are pretty different. The long, unbroken stretches of color on the left are evidence of recent admixture, while the short segments of different ancestries on the right suggest admixture many generations ago.
My Chromosome Painting is the one on the left. I have one grandparent whose family came from Germany, one grandparent whose family came from Ireland, and two Ashkenazi Jewish grandparents. In other words, my ancestors from different European populations just started mixing together in the past two or three generations. The Chromosome painting on the right shows someone who identifies as Latino (Antonio, an Engineer at 23andMe), whose Native American (yellow), African (pink) and European (blue) ancestors probably started mixing with each other many generations ago.
How can you use this information to understand your own Chromosome Painting? In general, if your most recent ancestor from a population was very recent, you will have segments of that ancestry on more chromosomes, and those segments will be longer, than if your most recent ancestor was many generations ago.
<h6>Thanks, Mom and Dad!</h6>
If you have a biological parent or child who is also a 23andMe user, you can connect with them to improve the resolution of your Ancestry Composition results.
Connecting with a parent will also reorganize your Chromosome Painting so that the top chromosome in each pair is the one you inherited from your mother, and the bottom chromosome is the one you inherited from your father.
<h6>Connecting or not with a Parent</h6>
Even if you are not connected with either of your parents through 23andMe, you may still be able to learn a little bit about their ancestry by looking at your own Chromosome Painting:
<ul>
<li>If you are male, you inherited all of the ancestry painted on your X chromosome from your mother.</li>
<li>If you have the same ancestry painted in the same place on both copies of a chromosome, then you inherited the same ancestry from both of your parents in that region of your genome.</li>
<li>If you share a segment of DNA with a <a href="https://you.23andme.com/tools/relatives/">DNA Relative</a>, and you know whether you are connected to that relative on your maternal or your paternal side, then you inherited that segment of DNA (and its ancestry) from the same side of your family through which you’re connected to that relative.</li>
<li>If your parents come from different genetic backgrounds, then you may be able to guess which chromosomes you inherited from which of your parents. You can do this by by looking at the ancestries painted on each chromosome. For technical reasons, this will work even better if you are connected with a parent. That is because our computational algorithm will be able to phase your raw data with more accuracy.</li>
</ul>
<h6>A deeper dive: Confidence levels</h6>
If you’ve mastered the basic details of your Chromosome Painting and you’d like to explore at an even more advanced level, click on “Change confidence level” and move the slider that appears above your Chromosome Painting. You can explore the different views of your Chromosome Painting at different confidence levels. You can also compare those different views to each other.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-24854 size-larger" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/5_confidence_1-880x218.png" alt="" width="880" height="218" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/5_confidence_1-880x218.png 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/5_confidence_1-300x74.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/5_confidence_1-768x190.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/5_confidence_1.png 964w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 880px) 100vw, 880px" />
The algorithm we use to calculate your Ancestry Composition analyzes one small piece of your DNA at a time. For each piece of your DNA, we calculate the probability of that piece coming from 31 different populations. The confidence slider on the Chromosome Painting allows you to explore our estimates of your genetic ancestry at different probability cutoffs. For example, if a segment of your DNA has a 55 percent chance of being Japanese, then that segment will be painted as Japanese at the 50 percent confidence level. But at the 60 to 90 percent level it will be painted with a more broad ancestry (either Broadly East Asian, Broadly East Asian &amp; Native American, or Unassigned).
<h6>Putting it all together</h6>
Everyone’s genetic history is a little different. Every Chromosome Painting has a different story to tell too. This means that you may learn more about your ancestry from some of the suggestions in this blog post than from others. Just remember – like every true work of art, your Chromosome Painting isn’t something to be understood.  It&#8217;s something to be explored.
For a detailed technical explanation of how we calculate your ancestry and paint your chromosomes, check out the <a href="https://www.23andme.com/ancestry-composition-guide/">Ancestry Composition Guide</a>.

Meet Your Chromosome Painting

DNA extracted from bones at a burial site in a rocky valley on a remote island in the South Atlantic could hold important information for those with ancestral roots in Africa.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-1974" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/oldafricamap1508-300x221.png" alt="oldafricamap1508" width="300" height="221" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/oldafricamap1508-300x221.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/oldafricamap1508.png 350w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
A fascinating article in <a href="https://www.nature.com/news/what-dna-reveals-about-st-helena-s-freed-slaves-1.21096?WT.mc_id=SFB_NNEWS_1508_RHBox">Nature</a>, describes work led by <a href="http://snm.ku.dk/english/staffsnm/staff/?pure=en/persons/368359">Hannes Schroeder</a> to make that connection. Schroeder, a researcher at the University of Copenhagen, and his team have extracted genetic material from skeletal remains of some of the thousands of slaves who were freed by the British Navy between 1840 and 1865.
Taken from slave ships on their way to the New World as many as 20,000 people, many of them children, were saved from enslavement in the Americas, but were then unceremoniously deposited on the island of St. Helena. Sick and emaciated from their brutal ordeal many of them died there. The island’s Rupert Valley is the final resting place of more than 8,000 people.

This little known history would have been forgotten altogether if the graves were not found a few years ago during a construction project. The find, and the promise of sequencing the DNA of some of the bones there, offered Schroeder and his team a tantalizing opportunity – a chance to sequence individuals who’d been destined for slavery in the New World but never got there. Their DNA could reveal what written records have failed to track, the specific regions in Africa from where slaves came.
This is the part of Schroeder’s work that is most interesting for us here at 23andMe, where our own <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/the-african-genetics-project">African Genetics Project</a> is also trying to make that connection, albeit in a different way.
While much has been done to document the history of the enslavement of the more than 12 million Africans who survived the brutal Middle Passage to wind up in bondage in the New World, this effort, and 23andMe’s, offers a chance to look beyond the limitations of the written record. We know that the Africans enslaved in the Americas were not a monolithic group but individuals from different cultures and with different languages who were forced together into slavery.
Schroeder and his team have already sequenced partial genomes of about 20 individuals, and found that they represent a diverse collection of African groups. As the article notes some of the samples indicate shared ancestry with West and Central African ethnic groups, such as the Bamoun and Kongo. But for the others, matches could not be found. This is likely because there are not diverse reference data sets to compare them too. Schroeder is hoping that two medically-related sequencing efforts in Africa will help change that.
In the meantime 23andMe’s African Ancestry Project has begun to recruit people in the United States, who emigrated, or whose parents emigrated, from several specific countries in Sub-Saharan Africa to improve its set of African reference data. This will not just improve the information we can report back to people of African descent, it could also help yield new insights into the TransAtlantic slave trade.
“23andMe researchers hope to identify direct connections between locations in Africa and the Americas, possibly adding important details to the historical record,” said Joanna Mountain, Ph.D., senior director of research at 23andMe.
Like 23andMe Schroeder and his team are looking to make direct connections from specific locations in Africa and the individuals who wound up in St. Helena. In turn this may also help people of African descent living in the Americas a bridge to their own ancestral past.
Fatimah Jackson, a biological anthropologist at Howard University in Washington DC who is sequencing ancient DNA from other slave burial sites, is quoted in the Nature article as saying that his kind of research has the potential of changing people’s perception of the past.
“It&#8217;s a very personal thing for us,” Jackson said. “It&#8217;s not just ancient DNA. It&#8217;s ancient DNA of potential ancestors.”

Tracing Back to Africa

If Lisa hadn’t used 23andMe, it’s hard to imagine how she would have ever known about Nelly.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-24612 size-medium" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/LISA-P-QUOTE-300x300.jpg" alt="lisa-p-quote" width="300" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/LISA-P-QUOTE-300x300.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/LISA-P-QUOTE-150x150.jpg 150w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/LISA-P-QUOTE-768x768.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/LISA-P-QUOTE-880x880.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/LISA-P-QUOTE-271x271.jpg 271w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/LISA-P-QUOTE-372x372.jpg 372w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/LISA-P-QUOTE-574x574.jpg 574w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/LISA-P-QUOTE-980x980.jpg 980w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/LISA-P-QUOTE.jpg 1000w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Lisa hadn’t been searching for her. When she tested with 23andMe, Lisa was mostly just curious about the science of personal genetics.


“I was fascinated that the technology had advanced so far so quickly, and that I could get my DNA tested so easily,” she said.
A 47 year-old designer who lives in Durham, North Carolina, Lisa first heard about 23andMe in a Wall Street Journal article that ran a few years ago.
She thought the name was cool, but put off testing until a friend who’d used 23andMe convinced her to give it a try.
“On a lark, I decided to take the test,” Lisa said.

While she was still very interested in the science, Lisa was also curious about whether she could learn a little about her grandfather’s family. Her grandfather had been adopted, and raised by a loving and well-to-do family. He didn’t know and didn’t share much about his biological family with his daughter, Lisa’s mom. As a result that page of the family history was largely blank.
There was some speculation about his ancestry – that he was Irish – but nothing firm.
“I decided to take the test to either confirm or deny what little I knew,” Lisa said.
The speculation about having Irish ancestry was correct, but there were also some surprises, like having Balkan and Native American ancestry. Lisa’s biggest surprise was finding a close “DNA relative” she never knew she had.
“Within two days I got an email from a woman who matched as a second cousin,” Lisa said.
It was a lucky break because Lisa’s new found cousin was a gold mine of information, quickly filling up the blank pages in the family history.


“She opened everything up,” Lisa said.


Her cousin, a forensic genealogist, had pieced together her grandfather’s origins and the story of his grandmother, Lisa’s great grandmother Nelly Scofield.
Lisa learned that Nelly’s husband died and that she couldn’t care for her two young sons, forcing her to give up Lisa’s grandfather and his brother. The two boys went to different families, and were raised apart. According to Lisa’s cousin, many years later when Lisa’s grandfather was about 21, a man came to his work.
“I’m your brother,” the man said to Lisa’s grandfather.
He’d found his brother to tell him that he too had been adopted, that he had recently found their biological mother and that she wanted to see him. Instead of going to see his mother, Lisa’s grandfather told his brother to go away.


“He had a good life and a good family,” said Lisa.
That was the last contact the two had. Exchanging messages with her cousin, Lisa learned that the family had always known of her grandfather’s existence but they didn’t have a name. Lisa’s cousin also shared with her a newspaper clipping about her grandfather’s brother’s reunion with their mother, Nelly. And she shared more details about the family with Lisa, including their roots reaching back to a small island off the west coast of Ireland, and their love of music.
“It’s was amazing to learn what ancestral traits my grandfather had in common with his unknown relatives,” Lisa said.
And it wasn’t just his looks, but also his hobbies and talents, Lisa said.
“Who plays the Irish accordion when they don’t even know they are Irish?” she asked.


But for Lisa what was most powerful was what this connection meant for her mother, who will soon be meeting her cousins in person.
“She now knows, even if her dad didn’t, who his birth family was,” Lisa said.
And Lisa has advice for others considering using 23andMe.


“If you are even thinking about taking the test, do it.” She said. “ It&#8217;s anonymous and you don&#8217;t need to share anything, if you don&#8217;t want. But you never know what secrets are waiting to be unlocked and how your life might change just from spitting in a tube!”

Whoa Nelly

New research has found genetic markers linking schizophrenia with personality traits for the first time, shedding new light on the shared genetic <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-22635 size-medium" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Brain-Logo-287x300.jpg" alt="Brain Logo" width="287" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Brain-Logo-287x300.jpg 287w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Brain-Logo.jpg 438w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 287px) 100vw, 287px" />influences for personality and psychological disorders.
The findings, published in <a href="https://www.nature.com/ng/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ng.3736.html">Nature Genetics</a>, are consistent with research in recent decades showing that personality traits and psychological disorders are related.


In their paper, the researchers said their findings – identifying six variants associated with personality traits as well as genetic correlations between personality traits and psychiatric disorders – suggest that “part of the interrelation between personality traits and schizophrenia arises from a shared genetic basis.”

While past studies have found genetic associations for both schizophrenia and personality – there are literally hundreds of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with schizophrenia, for instance – this is the first time that researchers have found indications that they share genetic influences, which in turn can help explain the clinical association between the two.


To discover these findings, a team of scientists, looked at data from a 23andMe genome wide association study on what are called the “Big Five” personality traits – neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness and conscientiousness – and compared that data to findings from <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-24829 size-medium" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/ng.3736-F3-300x246.jpeg" alt="ng-3736-f3" width="300" height="246" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/ng.3736-F3-300x246.jpeg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/ng.3736-F3-768x630.jpeg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/ng.3736-F3.jpeg 784w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />other genome wide association studies on schizophrenia. (Last week some of the same scientists who worked on this study, announced their findings from the <a href="https://health.ucsd.edu/news/releases/Pages/2016-11-22-study-finds-rare-genetic-variations-linked-to-schizophrenia.aspx">largest genetic study to date on schizophrenia</a>. That study identified eight locations in the genome with copy number variants associated with schizophrenia risk.)
The researchers working on this latest study found that for all of the personality traits except conscientiousness, there was a polygenic overlap with schizophrenia. In addition, the researchers found that two specific genetic markers associated with neuroticism and five markers associated with openness to experience are also associated with schizophrenia.
The researchers were able to replicate their findings to confirm these associations.
In all, the researchers used data from more than 140,000 people, including data from the<a href="http://www.tweelingenregister.org/GPC/"> Genetics of Personality Consortium</a>, and from about 60,000 customers of 23andMe who consented to participate in research.
The findings are significant because they offer real clues to suggest that personality traits and schizophrenia share some of the same genetic influences. This in turn could help enlighten researchers studying the neurobiological process behind personality and the causes for conditions like schizophrenia.


You can find the paper in <a href="https://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v49/n1/full/ng.3736.html">Nature Genetics.</a>

Genetics found to influence personality and psychological disorders

By James Rathmell, 23andMe Privacy Fellow

Our mission at 23andMe is to help people access, understand and benefit from the human genome. One <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-6586" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/23andMe_Logo_blog-200x200.jpg" alt="23andMe_Logo_blog" width="200" height="200" />way we do this is by giving community members the ability to connect with distant and close genetic relatives with our sharing tools. We have two main tools you can use to compare your DNA and connect with others: “Share and Compare” and “DNA Relatives.”


It’s important when using these tools to think about your genetic privacy and be mindful about how you share your information. This post explains how the tools work, discusses what you should think about when using them, and shows you the tools you can use to control how your information is shared.
<h6>
Share and Compare</h6>

With Share and Compare, you can share your reports directly with close family and friends to examine <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-24591" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Share-and-Compare-Selection-300x188.png" alt="share-and-compare-selection" width="300" height="188" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Share-and-Compare-Selection-300x188.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Share-and-Compare-Selection.png 619w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />genetic differences. When you open Share and Compare, you’ll see a family tree. By clicking on the different relationships, you can invite family to view your 23andMe results – even if they haven’t been genotyped.
You can also share your results with friends and more distant relatives.
When you invite someone to share results, you have two options: you can either share all of your reports, including health and segment-level data, or share only your ancestry results. Sharing goes both ways; that is, if you share all of your reports with another customer, not only can they see all of your reports, but you can see all of their reports.
Under “Manage Connections,” you can review all of the connections you have. By clicking on a connection, you can change your sharing level or choose to remove the connection.
<a href="https://you.23andme.com/tutorials/share_compare/">Click here</a> to see the Share and Compare tutorial.

<h6>
DNA Relatives</h6>

DNA Relatives (DNAR) allows you to find and connect with the broader community of 23andMe members to <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-24595 size-medium" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/DNA-Relatives-Home-People-View-300x232.jpg" alt="dna-relatives-home-people-view" width="300" height="232" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/DNA-Relatives-Home-People-View-300x232.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/DNA-Relatives-Home-People-View-768x594.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/DNA-Relatives-Home-People-View-1024x792.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/DNA-Relatives-Home-People-View-880x680.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/DNA-Relatives-Home-People-View-1180x912.jpg 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/DNA-Relatives-Home-People-View.jpg 1261w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />discover shared genetics, relationships, and family history. If you choose to participate in DNAR, you have a number of different options, which you can change any time by clicking on Update DNA Relatives Preferences.
Your DNAR setting decisions only impact what information is viewable within the tool. It does not affect your broader 23andMe privacy settings.

<ul>
<li>Open Sharing. If you participate in Open Sharing, you will share your full name, ancestry reports, and overlapping DNA segments with all of your DNA relatives. You can also compare your results with any of your DNA relatives that are also participating in Open Sharing. If you don’t participate in Open Sharing, you can choose to send individual sharing requests to anyone whose reports you want to compare with.</li>
<li>Display Name. If you are participating in Open Sharing, your full name will be displayed. If you are not participating in Open Sharing, you can choose to display just your first name and last initial (Jane S), just your first initial and last name (J Smith), or just your initials (JS).
</li>
<li>
Enhanced Profile Settings (Optional). You can also choose to provide additional information to help other members find you and make connections. For example, you could add a family surname, the birth country of a grandparent, or a summary of your interests.
Once you’ve made connections on DNAR – either by participating in Open Sharing or by making individual connections – you can use the DNA tab to compare your connections to one another. This also means that any of your connections can compare you to any of their other connections, whether or not the other connections participate in DNAR.</li>
</ul>
<h6>
Other Ways of Sharing</h6>

Your genetic data is yours to benefit from, explore, and understand. With this in mind, we offer tools for you to export and print your raw data and reports.
There are many different websites and apps that will allow you to upload your raw genetic data to connect with new communities or receive different types of genetic reports. You may also want to discuss your results with a healthcare professional. Or you might want to share some of our fun traits reports on social media. Anytime you export or share information, though, it’s always important to think about who the intended audience is, and to consider the impact on yourself and relatives especially when sharing sensitive insights.

<h6>
Taking Control of Your Genetic Privacy</h6>
You can easily edit your Share and Compare and DNAR settings from your Account Settings page. If you don’t want to receive invitations from other community members, you can block all invitations. You can also view and manage all of your connections to change sharing levels or to remove connections. It’s worth reviewing these settings once or twice a year, and taking a look at your existing connections so that you have a full picture you’re sharing genetic results with. Sharing genetic results is incredibly exciting, and you can learn a great deal about yourself by connecting with close and distant relatives. However, it’s important to be thoughtful about sharing your information. Here’s a quick checklist of things to keep in mind.
<ul>
<li>
Have you thought about how sensitive information could impact others? When using Share and Compare, DNAR, or sharing your results elsewhere, there’s always the chance that you could learn something about yourself or your family – such as sensitive health information – that could be upsetting. Please be sensitive to others&#8217; right to choose for themselves whether they would like to know this kind of information. Ask the people you are considering sharing with if they’re okay learning more about your genetic reports.
</li>
<li>
Have you thought about what kind of information other people can learn about you? Whenever you give someone else access to your data – genetic data or not – there’s always the risk that they might choose to share it with others. While unlikely, it’s also possible that your connections could learn additional sensitive information about your genetics if you share segments with third parties. Think about what kinds of information you would be comfortable with others learning about you whenever using any sharing tools on 23andMe or elsewhere.
</li>
<li>
Are you comfortable with security and privacy of other apps/websites? Before you upload your raw genetic data to a new site or app, make sure you’re confident that they have strong security and that they will protect your privacy.
</li>
<li>
Have you talked about sharing with family and friends with profiles on your account? If you have several people sharing an account, and you choose to connect with someone, you can choose which profiles in the account to share. Ask the other people who share your account if it’s okay to share their results.
</li>
<li>
Have you thought about your legal rights? The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) prohibits the use of genetic information to determine health insurance eligibility or premiums or for employment decisions such as hiring, firing, pay, and promotion. But, the law does not address other potential uses of genetic information, such as for determining eligibility and premiums for long term care insurance or life insurance. This is particularly important to think about with Share and Compare, and when using your genetic data on other apps and websites. Since you share genes with your family, you may want to consider how information you post could impact them as well.</li>
</ul>

James Rathmell

Sharing and Protecting Your Genetic Information

When managing your own health, it helps to know your history, or more specifically your family health history.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-18560 size-medium" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/RN4_9658-300x199.jpg" width="300" height="199" />


You don’t just inherit your good looks from your parents or those who came before you. Sometimes, serious health conditions are passed down through the generations. Both common and rare diseases often run in families, sometimes skipping a generation or two. It helps to document some of the diseases faced by relatives in your family tree, so you can understand your own health risks.


While most people know that this information can be critical to their health, many people either do not know or have never tried to document this information. A little more than a decade ago, the U.S. Surgeon General kicked off an effort to change that by instituting <a href="http://www.hhs.gov/programs/prevention-and-wellness/family-health-history/about-family-health-history/index.html">National Family History Day</a>.
Because Thanksgiving is such a family-centric holiday, each year since 2004, the national holiday has doubled as a day not just to eat turkey and pie, but to talk to family and attempt to document health history.
To make it easier for families, the surgeon general even set up a simple and sharable tool for families to document their own health history called My Family Health Portrait. It allows you and your family members to create a family tree, write down health conditions and together create a powerful document to help you all manage your health.

Know Your Family Health History

We assume that, like a knife dulled by repeated use, as we age our brain loses the sharp edge of youth, but the truth is more complicated than that.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-24366" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Cog-Tools-300x266.jpg" alt="cog-tools" width="300" height="266" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Cog-Tools-300x266.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Cog-Tools-768x681.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Cog-Tools-1024x908.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Cog-Tools-880x780.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Cog-Tools-1180x1046.jpg 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Cog-Tools.jpg 1435w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Some brain functions get worse; some get better.
Looking to add another layer of data for scientists studying the relationship between genetics, aging and the brain, 23andMe is experimenting with collecting data through half a dozen new cognitive games. Unlike surveys, these cognitive games measure specific aspects of brain aptitude directly, by collecting data about research participants’ choices and abilities as they perform the game tasks.


Developed with the help of Laura Germine, Ph.D., Director of the McLean Hospital Laboratory for Brain and Cognitive Health Technology and a psychiatry researcher at Harvard Medical School, the games will test attention, focus, processing speed, motor skills and risk-taking, and help researchers gauge various aspects of cognitive function. This kind of data can help those studying psychiatric and neurological conditions as well as the aging process among other things.
In prior research, Germine has found that although some brain function decline as we age, some functions improve


“We found different abilities really maturing or ripening at different ages,” she told the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/17/health/older-really-can-mean-wiser.html?_r=0">New York Times</a> last year. 
Germine said, “It’s a much richer picture of the life span than just calling it aging.”


23andMe’s purpose for using these games is to study the relationship between those brain changes and genetics.
In the past, genetic factors have been correlated with cognitive attributes and ability. Using these new tools to gather data on cognitive ability adds a new layer to the kind of phenotypic information 23andMe researchers can gather for their work, and potentially share with 23andMe’s over 2 million customers through new insights from that data. 23andMe’s unique research model invites customers to participate in research if they wish – customers can opt out of research without impacting their 23andMe experience.
Researchers can then use the resulting aggregated and de-identified data to study the genetics underlying disease.
As part of that process, 23andMe asks customers all sorts of questions from whether they can curl their tongues to whether they’ve ever had cancer. The answers to those questions, combined with genetic information, give our researchers a tremendous resource that has already led to important genetic findings.
This new information, using games to track changes in focus or processing speed or motor skills, for example, could help researchers learn more detailed information about people’s cognitive function.
The hope is that with the launch of cognitive games, our researchers will be able to gather important new data points for learning what role genetics may play in brain function, personality, and the aging process, as well as how those abilities change over time.
And since when has generating research data been this fun for the participant too?

Latest Posts — Page 94