March 6, 2014
The ashes of the Holocaust left very little for Peter Istvan Kovacs to sift through in his search for his ancestors. There were very few Hungarian Jews who survived the war and exterminations. Among those murdered was Peter’s great grandfather, beaten to death in 1941 for refusing to convert to [...]
February 25, 2014
Libby is a geneticist for NOAA Fisheries, the federal agency responsible for the management and conservation of living marine resources. One of her responsibilities is to genotype endangered species of fish, tracking generations of families. That’s right, fish have families. They have pedigrees. The irony is, [...]
January 31, 2014
Daniella had always pestered her father about details of their ancestry, but apart from a few bits and pieces he never gave her a clear picture of their family background. When he began his battle with terminal cancer, Daniella decided that it was time to learn more about their ancestry together using [...]
January 23, 2014
A friend of Gwen Schroeder once told her: “Don’t cheer from the sidelines if you can run the race.” So when her father was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, Gwen laced up her shoes. A post-production manager who works in New York City for the TED Conferences, Gwen signed up to run a marathon to raise [...]
January 16, 2014
23andMe offers people the chance to explore their own DNA, but for Jason Gullickson that wasn’t enough. Jason wanted to touch his data. He wanted to hold it up to the light and turn it around. He wanted to make it tangible. A programmer who likes to make things, Jason is fascinated with what he can do [...]
December 23, 2013
Megan Runge has dark curly hair and the kind of smile that invites you in. Perfect for a curious college student with a summer job scooping gelato at the beach in Florida. It was that same openness and curiosity that drew her to 23andMe. An adoptee, Megan didn’t know anything about her biological [...]
November 25, 2013
Editor’s note: Pending an FDA decision, 23andMe no longer offers new customers access to health reports referred to in this post. Customers who received their health information prior to November 22, 2013 or purchased their kit before that time will be able to see their health reports. But customers who [...]
November 20, 2013
Amy’s story begins: “Once upon a dime…” And then, as she says, “It just gets weirder.” Amy, a writer and director of a small library in an Alaskan fishing village, always knew she’d been adopted. That wasn’t news. But her birth story certainly was. Amy came into this world on November 16, 1964. Mr. [...]
November 12, 2013
Editor’s note: Pending an FDA decision, 23andMe no longer offers new customers access to health reports referred to in this post. Customers who received their health information prior to November 22, 2013 will still be able to see their health reports, but those who purchased after that time will only have [...]
November 5, 2013
He may have seen his mother once before, but PJ Holland can’t be sure. It’s a fleeting memory, one of his first. He would have been two or three at the time. He remembers watching two women crying and hugging each other near his room. He thinks one of the women was his mother. He remembers seeing the two [...]
