<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-14230 size-medium" title="Rory and Daddy on the beach" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Rory-and-Daddy-on-the-beach-300x300.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Rory-and-Daddy-on-the-beach-300x300.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Rory-and-Daddy-on-the-beach-150x150.jpg 150w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Rory-and-Daddy-on-the-beach-271x271.jpg 271w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Rory-and-Daddy-on-the-beach-372x372.jpg 372w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Rory-and-Daddy-on-the-beach-574x574.jpg 574w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Rory-and-Daddy-on-the-beach.jpg 696w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
It’s the most common genetic disorder in the United States, but Milo Sharp had never heard of it before.
The disorder, hemochromatosis, causes iron overload. Undiagnosed it can lead to a build up of iron in the body, particularly in the liver. This, in turn, can lead to serious health problems.
In the United States about 1 of every 300 people has <a href="https://www.23andme.com/topics/health-predispositions/hereditary-hemochromatosis">hereditary hemochromatosis</a>, but people remain largely unaware of the condition, which often has few symptoms and is hard to diagnose.
“Honestly I’d never heard of it which is kind of surprising, (because) my father is a doctor who specializes in blood,” said Milo, a 37 year-old computer programmer in Raleigh North Carolina.
Milo would have remained unaware of the lurking threat but for his wife’s interest in genetics.
“My wife decided to sign up with 23andMe, just to satisfy her curiosity,” he said.
After a little prodding from her, he also got a kit.
“Once we got our data, we found out some interesting details about our ancestry, but I found myself drawn to the health information,” Milo said.
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Still relatively young, Milo was dealing with a few health problems – sleep apnea, type 2 diabetes and high cholesterol – that taken together concerned him. Already a father of three boys, Milo’s wife was pregnant with a boy. Suddenly Milo’s long-term health became that much more important.
“I wanted to be there for my sons,” he said.
Milo saw that he was at increased risk for diabetes, which is something he already knew he had, but it was when he looked at his carrier status report that he learned something new.
“When I drilled down it was kind of surprising – I found not just one (variant) but two that put me at higher risk for hemochromatosis,” Milo said.
As he read more about the disease and how it can impact the body if untreated, Milo became concerned.
“I was worried that if I had it, it could exacerbate some of the other conditions I already had,” he said.
So he printed out a copy of his 23andMe results and took them with him the next time he saw his doctor.
“None of the doctors had ever heard of (23andMe) so not surprisingly they were pretty skeptical,” Milo said.
Hemochromatosis is typically hard to diagnose until it gets to more acute stages. But Milo explained that he carried two genetic variants that put him at a higher risk for the disease. Because of his existing conditions, Milo said he didn’t want to wait for symptoms to appear. He had additional blood tests done and one showed significantly elevated serum ferritin levels, essentially an indication of how much iron is stored in his organs.
“My (doctor) said, ‘this is something we’re going to want to look at,’” Milo said.
After working with other doctors and having a liver biopsy, Milo learned that he indeed had hemochromatosis.
“I had significant iron overload in my liver,” he said.
His liver was under stress and had internal scarring, but the condition was found early enough that there were specific treatments he could undergo to manage it.
“I can do other things like change my diet and lifestyle to improve my health and I’m working on that,” he said. “I think 23andMe may have saved my life or at least prolonged it and I want to let others know that.”
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23andMe Blog

23andMe Blog Team

Battling Against A Common Genetic Disease

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-12933" title="Jennie Cole" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Jennie-Cole-169x300.jpg" alt="" width="169" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Jennie-Cole-169x300.jpg 169w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Jennie-Cole.jpg 270w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 169px) 100vw, 169px" />Jennie Cole, c.1895
As the series <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wnet/finding-your-roots/">Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.</a> begins its 10-week run on PBS, The Blog will feature posts from 23andMe’s Ancestry Ambassadors featuring their own stories about using DNA to dig into ancestry.
By CeCe Moore
I have always felt a special affinity for Jewish people and their heritage. Throughout my life I have had many Jewish friends.
I have even been mistaken for a Jewish person despite having no known Jewish ancestors.
As a result, I was especially intrigued when, after 23andMe&#8217;s Ancestry Finder launched in 2010, I found that a number of people with segments of DNA that matched mine were self-identified as <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/detail-for-ashkenazi-ancestry">Ashkenazi Jews</a>. The Ancestry Finder lab seeks to graphically illustrate the country of origin for specific segments of your DNA by locating stretches that match those of people from specific geographic regions. Ancestry Finder also identifies matching segments for <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/ashkenazi-ancestry-and-health">Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry</a>.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-13008 size-full" title="CeCe's Uncle's matches with one gparent" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/CeCes-Uncles-matches-with-one-gparent.jpg" alt="" width="419" height="227" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/CeCes-Uncles-matches-with-one-gparent.jpg 419w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/CeCes-Uncles-matches-with-one-gparent-300x163.jpg 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 419px) 100vw, 419px" />My Ancestry Finder chart shows matches with people who have three Ashkenazi grandparents
In particular, in my Ancestry Finder results I noticed a cluster on my seventh chromosome that appeared to contain many matches with self-declared Ashkenazi ancestry. When I examined the downloaded spreadsheet of Ancestry Finder matches, I discovered that on Chromosome 7, between the positions 51,500,000 and 146,700,000, I had no less than 47 matches with people who self-identify as at least partially Jewish. These matches all appeared to be rather small and concentrated on that one spot, but it did cause me to ponder the possibility that I could have distant Jewish ancestors.
In further investigation, I found that my mother had no matches associated with Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry in her Ancestry Finder lab. Since my father is deceased, I asked my paternal uncle to test in his place. When I received his results, it was clear as day that the same Ashkenazi cluster on his seventh chromosome!
In fact, his Jewish connection appeared to be even more substantial than mine, with 69 self-described “Ashkenazi” matches on Chromosome 7 between positions 39,400,000 and 103,400,000 found in the Ancestry Finder match download.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-13042 size-full" title="CeCe's Uncle's matches" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/CeCes-Uncles-matches1.jpg" alt="" width="434" height="218" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/CeCes-Uncles-matches1.jpg 434w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/CeCes-Uncles-matches1-300x151.jpg 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 434px) 100vw, 434px" />Paternal Uncle&#8217;s matches with people who have three Ashkenazi grandparents.
Notably, my paternal uncle’s results also included several Public Matches in 23andMe’s <a href="https://www.23andme.com/you/relfinder/">Relative Finder</a> who list their ancestry as Jewish. Most of these are predicted as &#8220;Distant Cousins,&#8221; which probably explains why they don&#8217;t appear in my Relative Finder. In this case, testing just one generation further back in time revealed very useful information.
While this Ashkenazi ancestry is fairly distant, it certainly appears to be authentic. With approximately 70% of my uncle’s chromosomes covered in Ancestry Finder, 3.6% &#8211; 7.8% is declared <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/detail-for-ashkenazi-ancestry">Ashkenazi</a>. With this in mind, I would guess that he and my father have a 2nd great-grandparent of primarily Jewish descent or several ancestors with lesser amounts of Jewish ancestry.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-13008 size-full" title="CeCe's Uncle's matches with one gparent" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/CeCes-Uncles-matches-with-one-gparent.jpg" alt="" width="419" height="227" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/CeCes-Uncles-matches-with-one-gparent.jpg 419w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/CeCes-Uncles-matches-with-one-gparent-300x163.jpg 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 419px) 100vw, 419px" />Paternal Uncle&#8217;s matches with people who have one Ashkenazi grandparent. 
Since the majority of the matches cluster in the same area, the most likely conclusion is that this DNA is inherited from a single ancestor. My paternal family tree is fairly complete and so far without an obvious suspect, but since my father’s great-grandmother, Jennie Cole’s father, is unknown, this scenario is a viable possibility. To focus in on this prospect, I would need to test more of Jennie’s descendants to isolate her DNA and determine if there is evidence of Jewish ancestry in the portions of the DNA that each of them inherited from Jennie. Since the paternity of Jennie has long been an enigma to me, this is a very intriguing new avenue of exploration for my genealogy research.
Before testing at 23andMe, I never would have imagined that I had Jewish ancestry. Now that I have discovered this tantalizing fact, I am on the hunt to learn more about this elusive ancestor!
23andMe provides genetic testing services for informational purposes; your results may or may not help you find or identify relatives or family members.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-full wp-image-12939" title="CeCephoto" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/CeCephoto.jpg" alt="" width="114" height="162" />
CeCe Moore is a genetic genealogist specializing in the use of autosomal DNA for genealogy. She writes the popular blog <a href="http://www.yourgeneticgenealogist.com/">Your Genetic Genealogist</a> and works as a television producer with StudioINTV.   CeCe is the Southern California Regional Coordinator of the International Society of Genetic Genealogy (ISOGG), serves on the Advisory Board of the Mixed Roots Foundation, and is a member of Mensa.  Her favorite genetic experiment is her seven-year-old son, Nicolas.

CeCe Moore

Discovering Unknown Jewish Ancestry with 23andMe

By Ann Turner, M.D.
Many members of my extended family have inherited a mutation responsible for hearing impairment.   The loss is detectable in childhood and progresses gradually over the years. I began wearing hearing aids forty years ago, when I was thirty.
<h6>A Search</h6>
We have participated in several genetic studies over the years, but the cause has not been found yet. I decided to see how far I could get by testing cousins with and without the hearing impairment. With testing could I at least identify a chromosomal region shared by just the relatives with the condition?
<div id="attachment_22394" style="width: 297px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-22394" class="size-medium wp-image-22394" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Ann_cropped_modified-287x300.jpg" alt="" width="287" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Ann_cropped_modified-287x300.jpg 287w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Ann_cropped_modified.jpg 355w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 287px) 100vw, 287px" />Dr. Ann Turner, MD</div>
I began with myself and two cousins in 2007 when autosomal testing was first offered at deCODEme (at a cost of nearly $1000) and continued adding cousins and even spouses as the prices dropped more and more at 23andMe.
Using traditional genealogical techniques, we were able to track the trait back through almost 200 years to John Riley (born about 1813 in Stafford County, Virginia) or his wife Mary Ellen Bigger (born about 1810 in County Antrim, Ireland).
<h6>Hearing Loss</h6>
We knew from memories of older family members that one of their children, Eliza Jane, was very hard of hearing. A letter written in 1893 by Eliza Jane to her sister Allie survives, wherein she asks:
“Does your hearing fail you anny? [sic] George is quite bad.”
Her brother George was 47 at the time, and Allie was 40. Clearly they were anticipating a condition that “ran in the family,” even before the term genetics was coined. As it turned out, Allie was not affected, but another brother, James, had a more complicated history.
James’ hearing difficulties are documented in some Civil War pension application papers. After the war, James married, became a carpenter, and had six children. He died at the age of 57 after a fall from some scaffolding. A coworker had called a warning that the scaffold was not secure, but he did not hear. His widow then applied for a Civil War pension.
<h6><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-25696 size-medium" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Trait-Chromosome-Diagram-293x300.jpg" alt="" width="293" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Trait-Chromosome-Diagram-293x300.jpg 293w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Trait-Chromosome-Diagram.jpg 699w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 293px) 100vw, 293px" />Disability</h6>
There was some dispute about whether his hearing loss was a pre-existing condition, or whether it was related to his service, during which he had contracted the measles, a known cause of sudden deafness. He wrote in his own disability pension application:
“I was out of my head, and when I came to my senses the comrades of my company were taking care of me in the camp, and I was totally deaf, and have been severely deaf in both ears ever since.”
He was discharged, and his commanding officer wrote:
“This man was slightly deaf at the time of his enlistment. About the middle of October he was attacked with the measles and since his recovery he has been unable to hear even the loudest command.”
James would have been 18 at the time he enlisted, so if the hearing loss was noticeable at that age, he probably had both a hereditary and environmental explanation for his deafness. Some of his children were also known to be hard of hearing at a young age, but none of his living descendants still carry the trait (nor do any descendants of George).
<h6>What about the Genetics?</h6>
Those were some of the examples of the hearing impairment that we were able to trace through paper records, but what about the genetics? Could we trace the hearing impairment trait through DNA?
The Family Inheritance: Advanced tool at 23andMe is an easy way to visualize the chromosomal regions shared by different relatives. The figure shows four of the people I tested. They share the hearing loss, come from different lines of descent, and are the most distantly related possible. (Closer cousins share so many segments that the target wouldn’t stand out.) The answer to my initial question is a resounding yes! Other extended families may be able to follow this model of collecting cousins, which I have also described in a column for the <a href="http://www.jogg.info/52/files/SatiableCuriosity.pdf">Journal of Genetic Genealogy</a>.
James Lupski has proposed the term “clan genomics” for this type of endeavor.
Now what? The sense of hearing is complex, with numerous genes affecting structures and functions. To date, 122 different loci (that is, general locations) have been <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22016077">associated with hearing loss</a>. The actual gene has been identified for only half of those. None of the locations overlap the section implicated in our family, so we are exploring virgin territory. We’ve reduced the possibilities from 3 billion bases and 20-some thousand genes to a mere 15,000,000 bases and 278 genes (many with unknown functions), but there’s still a ways to go.
It’s highly unlikely that any of the SNPs in our genotype data from 23andMe are actually responsible, since the chip design focuses on relatively common variants. Thus I am participating in the exome pilot project at 23andMe, which will completely sequence the coding regions of all genes and (if we’re lucky) may identify a novel mutation. There may be no suspicious variants, or there may be a superabundance of potential candidates, but that’s part of the adventure.
In the meantime, I am always on the lookout for even more distant cousins who might harbor the same mutation. Circumstantial evidence makes John Riley the more likely ancestor, but he is a brick wall in my genealogy.
If the mutation originated with him, we might be the only people in the world to shed light on yet another gene important for the sense of hearing. If he inherited it from an ancestor, there might be other lines of descent out there who share some DNA with us in that part of chromosome 15. Either outcome would be intriguing.
To be continued…
23andMe’s services are not a substitute for professional medical or diagnostic advice.  Always consult your physician for medical or diagnostic advice.
Ann Turner received her undergraduate degree in biology in 1964 and her M.D. from Stanford University in 1970. Her interest in genealogy began in midlife, when she read a family memoir about her father’s ancestors coming to America in 1635 on the ship Abigail. She began thumbing through the passenger manifest, where she recognized another familiar name–one of her mother’s ancestors. One family had headed for Connecticut and another for Vermont. Their descendants–her mother and father–met and married 300 years later in Iowa.
She founded the GENEALOGY-DNA mailing list at RootsWeb in the year 2000, the same week she received results from the first commercially available mtDNA test at Oxford Ancestors. She is the co-author (with Megan Smolenyak) of Trace Your Roots with DNA: Using Genetic Tests to Explore Your Family Tree and writes a regular column called ‘Satiable Curiosity for the Journal of Genetic Genealogy. She has consulted with Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation and 23andMe.

Ann Turner

Tracking Down a Trait

As the series <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wnet/finding-your-roots/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.</a> continues its 10-week run on PBS, The Blog will feature posts from 23andMe’s Ancestry Ambassadors featuring their own stories about using DNA to dig into ancestry.
By Shannon Christmas
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-full wp-image-12107" title="shannon's gp" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/shannons-gp.jpg" alt="" width="220" height="278" />
African American genealogy remains a challenging jigsaw puzzle where half of the pieces seem irrevocably lost. Many families scarred by chattel slavery buried their pasts to distance themselves and their progeny from the horrors of bondage.
<h2>A Fractured History</h2>
Now, advances in genetics and Internet technology have unearthed some of the long-buried pieces of our significantly fractured history.
Uncovering some of those missing pieces for my family required an open mind. One of my paternal great-grandmothers, Katie Lee Davis of Warren County, North Carolina, inherited a revisionist version of our family’s past.
In her correspondence with one of my cousins, Grandma Katie identified her ancestors, wrote lovingly of her paternal aunts, and recalled never having known a former slave among her relatives. Yet in 2010, 16 years after her death, revelations about Grandma Katie’s ancestors began to tell a different story. 

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-12109" title="gravestone" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/gravestone-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/gravestone-300x225.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/gravestone.jpg 453w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Marriage and death records from Warren County list Grandma Katie’s paternal grandparents as Henry and Lucinda Davis, an African-American couple about whom little else is known.
<h2>A Pedigree</h2>
However, in the summer of 2010, Ray, the husband of one of my father’s first cousins, emailed me a pedigree outline that omitted Henry’s name and replaced it with a Peter “White” Davis. The glaring conflict between the government documents I had examined and this new email raised questions.
Who was Peter “White” Davis? Was he really Grandma Katie’s grandfather?
The answers to those questions only heightened my curiosity. Ray reported that Peter “White” Davis, a slave owner formally named Peter Randolph Davis, allegedly sired many mulatto children with his slaves. According to one of Katie’s elderly distant relatives, Grandma Katie’s father, Richard D. Davis, was one of those mulatto children.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-12108" title="erasmuschristmas" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/erasmuschristmas-222x300.jpg" alt="" width="222" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/erasmuschristmas-222x300.jpg 222w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/erasmuschristmas.jpg 225w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 222px) 100vw, 222px" />
Tracing Peter Randolph Davis’ lineage yielded another discovery. Peter’s maternal great-grandparents included a couple I had encountered in previous research: Captain William Green and Mary Elizabeth Christmas. Captain Green and his wife, Mary, were indirect ancestors of my great-grandfather, Richard Christmas.
<h2>A Warren County Planter</h2>
Richard Christmas’s paternal grandfather, Lewis Yancey Christmas, a wealthy Warren County planter and attorney, took two slaves as common-law wives. The first union produced 12 children, including my great-great-grandfather, Erasmus Christmas.
If the Peter Randolph Davis story was accurate, then my great grandfather Richard Christmas and my great grandmother Katie Lee Davis were not only husband and wife for 60 years, but 4th cousins once removed.
The possibility of a consanguineous marriage, though initially unsettling, provided an opportunity to verify this new paternity claim using DNA testing. Web-based DNA analysis tools allow one to search an individual’s raw DNA data file from 23andMe for runs of homozygosity and DNA segments indicating one’s parents shared recent common ancestors.
<h2>Cousin Test</h2>
Since my grandfather, the son of Richard Christmas and Katie Lee Davis had tested with 23andMe, the truth sat just a few keystrokes away. GEDMatch.com’s “Cousin Test for Parents” identified nine runs of homozygosity among my grandfather’s 22 autosomal chromosomes, amounting to more than 55 centimorgans (cM) of DNA, an amount that suggests his parents were at least 4th cousins.
A similar tool created by mathematician David Pike (<a href="http://www.math.mun.ca/%7Edapike/FF23utils/roh.php">http://www.math.mun.ca/~dapike/FF23utils/roh.php</a>) replicated the results. Richard Christmas and Katie Lee Davis shared a bloodline, proving that Peter Randolph Davis was Katie’s paternal grandfather.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-12111 size-medium" title="shannondoc" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/shannondoc-218x300.jpg" alt="" width="218" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/shannondoc-218x300.jpg 218w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/shannondoc.jpg 473w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 218px) 100vw, 218px" />
In early 2012, I obtained a slave inventory from an estate file for Dr. Stephen Davis (Peter Randolph Davis’ father); the family of Henry and Lucinda Davis appears among the slaves listed.
Like so many former slaves, the paternal relatives with whom my great-grandmother spent her earliest years clearly sought to conceal their dark history to embrace a brighter future. But DNA illuminated how that past proved prologue.
23andMe provides genetic testing services for informational purposes; your results may or may not help you find or identify relatives or family members.
When not updating pedigree charts or mapping his chromosomes, Shannon Christmas is the founder and Chief Market Advisor/Design Strategist of The Christmas Collective, a strategic real estate and land use consulting atelier.

Shannon Christmas

The Missing Pieces in an African American Family History

As the series <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wnet/finding-your-roots/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.</a> begins its 10-week run on PBS, The Blog will feature posts from 23andMe’s <a href="../2012/01/22/new-23andme-ancestry-ambassadors-group/">Ancestry Ambassadors</a> featuring their own stories about using DNA to dig into ancestry.
By Tim Janzen, M.D.
My father, Robert Janzen, comes from a long line of hardworking Low German Mennonite farmers. But when 23andMe developed the feature to identify <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/detail-for-ashkenazi-ancestry">Ashkenazi Jewish</a> heritage, I really wanted to determine whether his data suggested any Jewish ancestry. Let me explain.
His Mennonite ancestors were persecuted in the Low Countries – in what is now the Netherlands and Belgium – and in the 1500s they fled to a safer haven in what is now Poland.   After Catherine the Great opened Russia to settlers, his ancestors migrated to South Russia between 1789 and 1819 where they established small villages of Mennonites on the Russian Steppe.   After many
After Catherine the Great opened Russia to settlers, his ancestors migrated to South Russia between 1789 and 1819 where they established small villages of Mennonites on the Russian Steppe.   After many hardships they eventually prospered and developed thriving agricultural colonies that helped transform South Russia into the “breadbasket” of the world before about a third of the Mennonites immigrated to the United States in the 1870s.
The Mennonites who lived in Poland and Russia were an endogamous religious group, meaning they rarely married others who were not adherents to their faith. But there were
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-11779 size-full" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Jacob-Peters-and-Helena-Bergman.jpg" alt="" width="221" height="319" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Jacob-Peters-and-Helena-Bergman.jpg 221w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Jacob-Peters-and-Helena-Bergman-208x300.jpg 208w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 221px) 100vw, 221px" />
many exceptions to that practice, and over the centuries a significant number of non-Mennonites joined the Mennonite faith.   Relatives on my father’s mother’s side have said that one of our ancestors was Jewish. My father&#8217;s great uncle Johann Peters conveyed that we descend from a Catholic priest who married a “redheaded Jewess” sometime in the distant past. Who this was we do not know.
According to the historical record between 1750 and 1790 26,000 Jewish followers of Jacob Frank converted to Christianity in Poland. Perhaps my Jewish ancestor was among them. Traditional genealogical tools and family stories helped to identify some possibilities. There was Joseph Nowitzky (1776-1844), whose ancestry is cloaked in mystery.
The Nowitzky name is found among Ashkenazi Jews, and family stories from relatives in Canada said that Joseph Nowitzky was a traveling Jewish salesman whose daughter Maria Nowitzky lived with a Mennonite family and eventually married a son from that family.   But written records from South Russia suggest that Joseph Nowitzky had become a Mennonite by 1801.   He and his family are listed in the major Mennonite censuses from 1801 to 1816. Another relative has heard that we are descended from a woman of Jewish background named Justina von Liechtenstein. So I was faced with a problem many genealogists confront – an end to the paper trail and conflicting family stories. This is where using DNA can help. While any two people’s genomes are 99.5 percent identical, that small bit of difference is incredibly important. It’s what makes each of us unique and it allows genetic genealogists to find relatives and map out information about our ancestry. Fundamentally this comes down to making comparisons, either between individuals to see how closely they are related, or comparing an individual to groups of individuals to determine common ancestry.
The closer two people are related, the more similar their DNA. The more shared ancestry a person has with a group, the more segments of DNA he or she shares with that group of people. 23andMe compares individuals in their database with its Relative Finder tool and finds potential matches. Using an advanced tool called “Ancestry Finder,” you combine Relative Finder matches with ancestry survey information about the country of origin of their grandparents. This can help tell you more about your ancestry.
You can also tweak the controls and increase or decrease the length of the matching segments, measured in a unit called centimorgans (cMs). When I set the minimum segment size to five cMs, set the number of grandparents from the same country to one and clicked the box to show Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry, Ancestry Finder indicated that between 2 percent and 3.8 percent of my father’s DNA is of Ashkenazi Jewish origin.
Results for my father&#8217;s sisters are similar and the average amount of DNA that is of <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/detail-for-ashkenazi-ancestry">Ashkenazi Jewish</a> origin for my father and his four sisters is 2.27 percent.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-11785 size-full" title="Ancestry Finder Display" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Ancestry-Finder-Display.jpg" alt="" width="468" height="362" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Ancestry-Finder-Display.jpg 468w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Ancestry-Finder-Display-300x232.jpg 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 468px) 100vw, 468px" />
I also have data from two distant relatives who descend from my father’s great-great-grandparents, Jacob Peters (b. 1823) and Helena Bergmann (b. 1826).   Helena Bergmann’s mother was Justina Nowitzky, who was a daughter of Joseph Nowitzky.   The Ancestry Finder results indicate that my father’s relatives have an average of 4.35% Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry.   This would be consistent with each of them being approximately 1/32 Ashkenazi Jewish in origin.   The Ancestry Finder results for my father and his sisters would suggest that they are about 1/64 Ashkenazi Jewish in origin. I reviewed the 23andMe results of 33 other Mennonites, as well as the data from my father’s paternal cousins to see if they show any evidence of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry.   None of them show more than 1 percent Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry.   These results confirm that my father indeed has Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry on his mother&#8217;s side.   I cannot prove at this time that the Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry came through Joseph Nowitzky, but that is a strong possibility.   If the Jewish ancestry wasn’t from Joseph Nowitzky then it could have come from one or more of Jacob Peters’ and Helena Bergmann’s great-grandparents. In any
The Ancestry Finder results for my father and his sisters would suggest that they are about 1/64 Ashkenazi Jewish in origin. I reviewed the 23andMe results of 33 other Mennonites, as well as the data from my father’s paternal cousins to see if they show any evidence of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry.   None of them show more than 1 percent Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry.   These results confirm that my father indeed has Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry on his mother&#8217;s side.   I cannot prove at this time that the Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry came through Joseph Nowitzky, but that is a strong possibility.   If the Jewish ancestry wasn’t from Joseph Nowitzky then it could have come from one or more of Jacob Peters’ and Helena Bergmann’s great-grandparents. In any case the Ancestry Finder results from 23andMe confirm that my father does have Jewish ancestry as related in the family stories told by his great uncle Johann Peters.   Whether that ancestor was truly a redheaded Jewish woman may never be determined, but the 23andMe Ancestry Finder results certainly provide fascinating confirmation of an interesting family legend!

Tim Janzen is a family practice doctor at South Tabor Family Physicians in Portland, Oregon.   His interest in genealogical research goes back 35 years and he has particularly focused on Mennonite genealogy for the past 15 years.   He has a web site that summarizes many different sources available for Mennonite genealogical research found at <a href="http://www.timjanzen.com/">www.timjanzen.com</a> and has given many presentations about Mennonite genealogy in the United States and Canada.   He is the co-administrator of the Mennonite DNA project at <a href="http://www.mennonitedna.com/">www.mennonitedna.com</a>. He also serves on the ISOGG Y-DNA Haplogroup Tree Committee.   Tim is married to Rachel Janzen and they have four children.

Our Redheaded Jewish Grandmother

As the series <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wnet/finding-your-roots/">Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.</a> begins its 10-week run on PBS, The Blog will feature posts from 23andMe’s Ancestry Ambassadors featuring their own stories about using DNA to dig into ancestry.
By CeCe Moore
You never know what a DNA test might reveal!
A few months ago, spurred on by my interest in genetic genealogy, my sister Erin decided to order a DNA test from <a href="https://www.23andme.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">23andMe</a> for my brother-in-law John Huffer. Since John has never known his father, we didn&#8217;t really know what his results would show. His mother&#8217;s family has a strong oral tradition of Native American ancestry, so we expected some mixed ancestry. However, what we found was completely unexpected.
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Our Ancestry Ambassadors
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-11812 size-full" title="Ambassadors" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Ambassadors-scaled.jpg" alt="" width="2560" height="1969" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Ambassadors-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Ambassadors-300x231.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Ambassadors-768x591.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Ambassadors-1024x788.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Ambassadors-880x677.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Ambassadors-1180x908.jpg 1180w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px" />Ancestry Ambassadors from left to right, top row, Dr. Ann Turner, Larry Vick, Shannon Christmas, bottom row, Dr. Tim Janzen, Andrea Badger and CeCe Moore.
As the series <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wnet/finding-your-roots/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. </a>begins its 10-week run on PBS, The Blog will feature posts from 23andMe’s Ancestry Ambassadors.  They’ll be writing about how they’ve used DNA to dig into the roots of their own families’ histories.
With our Ancestry Ambassadors, we’ve been lucky to bring together a group of people who are not just enthusiastic about ancestry, but who also have garnered a reputation in the 23andMe’s community of users as trusted sources and helpful guides.
We created our Ancestry Ambassadors group to help us build the best service possible. They’ve already helped, by spending a day and talking to our scientists, engineers and our CEO Anne Wojcicki offering ideas for improving <a href="https://www.23andme.com/dna-ancestry">23andMe’s ancestry tools</a>.
Members of the group – CeCe Moore, Dr. Tim Janzen, Dr. Ann Turner, Andrea Badger, Larry Vick and Shannon Christmas – also got a chance to learn a little bit more about 23andMe’s research mission.
Each member of the group had ideas about improving the overall experience of using 23andMe, including more voices from users. Opening up the blog to guests like our Ancestry Ambassadors is one way to do that.
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His Ancestry Painting, in the image below, revealed that about five percent of his ancestry is African.   23andMe&#8217;s Ancestry Painting examines the 22 pairs of chromosomes one segment at a time and determines for each stretch whether it was most likely inherited from ancestors in Africa, Europe, or Asia and &#8220;paints&#8221; the segments based on that different ancestry.
I had never investigated John&#8217;s family tree before, but my curiosity was piqued. Fairly quickly it became obvious that his was no run-of-the-mill genealogy. John&#8217;s mother&#8217;s family traces straight back to Madison Hemings. That name may be familiar to you. Madison Hemings was the son of Sally Hemings, a mixed-race slave of Thomas Jefferson, our third president and author of the Declaration of Independence. My genealogy research clearly showed that Thomas Jefferson and Sally are John&#8217;s fourth great-grandparents!*
John has always especially admired Thomas Jefferson above all other historical figures and felt a special affinity to Monticello when he first visited there ten years ago, although he had absolutely no idea of his familial connection. When I first relayed my findings to John and my sister, they were, understandably, shocked. Once they started browsing the Internet in search of more information, they came across a very familiar photo on one of the websites about Monticello. An original of this very photo had hung in John&#8217;s house growing up. Further investigation shows that his mother had at least a vague knowledge of her family&#8217;s relationship to Thomas Jefferson and/or Sally Hemings, but did not pass it on to her children.
There have been a number of interesting &#8220;coincidences&#8221; involving the Huffers and Monticello that make one ponder on genetic memory. When John and my sister first visited Monticello on an anniversary trip ten years ago, they loved it so much that they decided to go back the very next year with their daughter Courtney.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-11936" title="JohnHuffer AncestryPainting" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/JohnHuffer-AncestryPainting-196x300.jpg" alt="" width="215" height="301" />John Huffer&#8217;s Ancestry Painting. The green segments represent his African ancestry. 
When Courtney entered the dining room of Monticello, she promptly passed out. Although her reaction could be attributed to the hot, humid day, it bears notice that this was the one and only time that Courtney has ever fainted. This was long before the family knew about their personal connection to the place or the families that lived there.   Courtney says that although she felt &#8220;overwhelmed&#8221; at Monticello, she also &#8220;felt at home&#8221;. Recently, the family visited Monticello for the first time since discovering their relationship to it and its previous inhabitants. John and Courtney both said that Monticello &#8220;seems like a happy place&#8221; and gave them a sense of belonging.
Since John had never had any relationship with his father&#8217;s family and had very little contact with his mother&#8217;s side, he says it was as if they &#8220;had no history&#8221;. Erin relates, &#8220;It&#8217;s been fun for John to finally have a legacy of some sort, not to mention one as interesting as this,&#8221; and goes on to say that this discovery has finally given John and his siblings &#8220;a sense of who they are and where they came from.&#8221; John’s young nephew Joshua tells me that learning about his illustrious roots has inspired him to strive to make more of his life and given him the confidence that he can indeed achieve his ambitious goals.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-full wp-image-11800" title="JohnHuffer" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/JohnHuffer.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="402" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/JohnHuffer.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/JohnHuffer-224x300.jpg 224w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />John Huffer at Monticello
The discovery has been meaningful for John, once a fatherless little boy, who can now take comfort and pride in the knowledge that he is directly descended from one of the Founding Fathers of our country! During his most recent visit to Monticello, he couldn&#8217;t help but wonder if his deep love of Paris is simply a coincidence or caused by the same unknown spark that made Thomas Jefferson fall in love with it so long ago. Or, if his fascination with the art of brewing beer could have come from his forebearers, whom he learned on his visit were expert brewers at Monticello. It is wonderful for John and his family to finally have these types of questions about their ancestry to ponder; questions that most of us take for granted.
DNA testing has come full circle for genetic genealogy with John&#8217;s story. It is fitting that one of the very first public uses of DNA for genealogical purposes was the Y-DNA test in 1998 that originally addressed the controversy surrounding the paternity of Sally Hemings&#8217; children. Today, more than a decade later, the simple decision to test with 23andMe is what led John to make this illuminating discovery about his roots.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-full wp-image-11801" title="John&amp;Courtney Huffer" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/JohnCourtney-Huffer.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="402" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/JohnCourtney-Huffer.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/JohnCourtney-Huffer-224x300.jpg 224w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />John and Courtney Huffer, descendants of Thomas Jefferson at Monticello
[*Although some Jefferson researchers had disputed the validity of the claims that Sally&#8217;s children were fathered by Thomas Jefferson, most of these doubts were put to rest after a 1998 Y-DNA test on Sally&#8217;s son Eston&#8217;s direct male line descendants proved that they carry the Y chromosome of Thomas Jefferson&#8217;s male line. Although Madison has no living direct line male descendants who could have their Y-Chromosome DNA tested to further support this claim, it is now widely accepted that Thomas Jefferson fathered all of Sally’s children. This is supported by oral histories of Sally&#8217;s descendants and analysis of the couple’s relationship and time spent together. Annette Gordon-Reed provides a detailed look at this evidence in her exhaustive study and Pulitzer Prize winning book, &#8220;The Hemingses of Monticello&#8221;. The official Jefferson Monticello website also addresses this <a href="http://www.monticello.org/site/plantation-and-slavery/thomas-jefferson-and-sally-hemings-brief-account" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">issue</a>. John’s discovery has sparked my interest in this fascinating subject. As a result, I am spearheading an autosomal DNA project on the descendants of Sally Hemings. Although it is now generally recognized that Thomas Jefferson fathered all of Sally Hemings&#8217; children, it has been impossible to determine with certainty. The introduction of autosomal DNA testing has changed this. Through autosomal DNA testing of specific individuals, I hope to be able to demonstrate that the descendants of Sally Hemings share blocks of DNA with Jefferson&#8217;s “legitimate” descendants. If it is not possible to procure DNA from any of these known descendants, I will seek DNA from descendants of individuals one step further back in Thomas Jefferson&#8217;s pedigree in an attempt to show that Sally&#8217;s descendants possess DNA from Jefferson&#8217;s ancestral lines. Since autosomal DNA undergoes random recombination with each successive generation, it will be necessary to test the oldest living descendants of these lines. DNA is the perfect tool for this because it does not harbor any prejudice or predetermined notions. Anyone who fits these parameters should contact me at <a href="mailto:yourgeneticgenealogist@gmail.com">yourgeneticgenealogist@gmail.com</a>.]
23andMe provides genetic testing services for informational purposes; your results may or may not help you to search for or identify relatives or family members.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-full wp-image-11797" title="CeCephoto" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/CeCephoto.jpg" alt="" width="114" height="162" />
CeCe Moore is a genetic genealogist specializing in the use of autosomal DNA for genealogy. She writes the popular blog  <a href="http://yourgeneticgenealogist.com/">Your Genetic Genealogist</a> and works as a television producer with StudioINTV.   CeCe is the Southern California Regional Coordinator for the International Society of Genetic Genealogy (ISOGG) and a member of Mensa.  Her favorite genetic experiment is her seven-year-old son, Nicolas.

DNA Tests Uncover African Ancestry and Surprising Connection to Thomas Jefferson

By Arnab Chowdry, Senior Scientific Software Engineer at 23andMe
Having been young and healthy for the majority of my life, I haven’t had many opportunities to interact with our health care system.   Not too long ago I was a sedentary, slightly-overweight, South Asian man entering my thirties.  I had some ambiguous family history of diabetes but, like everyone I know, I felt that the less I saw my doctor, the better.  Most importantly, by medical standards, I had no reason to consider myself predisposed to heart disease.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-10962" title="Arnab1" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Arnab1-300x199.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="199" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Arnab1-300x199.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Arnab1-768x511.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Arnab1-1024x681.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Arnab1-880x585.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Arnab1-1180x785.jpg 1180w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Then, not long ago, my 23andMe data and a paper in Nature Genetics changed my story.  Ironically, I work for 23andMe as a scientist and engineer; I analyze genetic data for a living, but until then my work had been abstract.  I knew we were helping people but never expected any particularly life-altering information to come out of my personal genetics.
It turns out that I carry a mutation in the MYBPC3 gene that is associated with familial hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM). South Asians that carry this mutation are at greatly increased risk for HCM.   Well that’s strange&#8211;if I’m a carrier, then one of my parents has to be a carrier, and one of their parents (and so on).  But if it is such a significant modifier of risk, shouldn’t I have heard of HCM running in my family, before?
With some research, I learned that HCM is not commonly screened for, in the United States or India, but is a leading cause of sudden cardiac death in <a title="“Dying to Play”" href="https://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2009/02/dying_to_play.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">athletes</a>.  So it’s reasonable that I may not have heard of HCM in my family, because it may never have been diagnosed.  But I called my mother anyway and started asking questions: do we have any heart disease in our family?
I was surprised to learn that the answer was an emphatic: yes.  Though we had never discussed it, my mother was similarly surprised that I didn’t know that the majority of deaths in my family were related to heart disease.  My grandmother, who I thought had died of diabetes, actually suffered from angina and died of heart failure.  My grandfather on my father’s side had early-onset heart attacks and died from a blood clot.  Their brothers and sisters?  Cardiac arrest.  I even had a middle-aged cousin I never met who died the month before due to sudden cardiac death.  And all this time, at the doctor’s office, I never checked any box related to heart disease in my family history.  This information wasn’t recorded, anywhere, except the notepad I was using.
Given the surprising prevalence of heart issues on both sides of my family, it was hard to pin down which of my parents was likely to carry my mutation, so I got them both genotyped by 23andMe.  From there, it was easy to determine that the mutation came from my father’s side, which had more of the early-onset heart attacks.  I explained the research paper and its caveats to him and told him to talk to his doctor, then hung up the phone and realized: “Wait, shouldn’t I talk to my doctor?”
How do I even bring it up?  I’m a member of an HMO (Kaiser), and I like my primary care physician.  He’s always taken me seriously and referred me to the appropriate specialists, but he’s not a geneticist and I’m sure he’s never heard of this mutation, this gene, or this paper.  I was afraid he would laugh at me if I tried to explain that I bought a test online and found a mutation that suggests I should be screened for HCM.  But that’s what I did, in a nutshell, and to my surprise, he called up cardiology right away.
The cardiologist had never heard of this mutation, either, and went so far as to claim that there aren’t any such dominant mutations in MYBPC3.  All right, the paper came out in 2009 and, living in North America, I didn’t expect a South Asian variant to be well-known, but I didn’t expect the cardiologist to speak so authoritatively on something he was clearly wrong about.  My physician, to his credit, referred me to the genetics department and sent me home.
The geneticist who called me back was surprisingly informed and began the conversation by apologizing for the misinformation the cardiologist gave me.  She was particularly disappointed because she had recently given a talk about mutations in MYBPC3 to that department.  She also hadn’t heard of this mutation, but asked me to forward her the relevant papers and spent a week reading them.  She said that this would be considered a “variant of unknown significance,” but because of the deletion being in MYBPC3, I should be screened for HCM anyway.
I was referred back to cardiology for testing.  I took a resting and stress test EKG that indicated a worrying drop in blood pressure after exercise and an unusually long recovery time (consistent with my experiences attempting to work out).  I got an echocardiogram which didn’t detect HCM but found abnormal wall motion in my heart.  I spoke to another cardiologist who told me: “you aren’t 40 yet, so you aren’t at risk.”  The results were forwarded back to my physician, who summarized them as “normal” and sent me home.
I’m a scientist and I’ve worked professionally with clinicians in the past.  I know how the population statistics work and why they sent me home.  It doesn’t make economic sense for an HMO to spend any more money on me, when they can’t treat the condition, anyway.  But as an individual, this was unsatisfying.  What could I do to empower myself?
A lot of things.  I started dieting and losing weight.  I increased my activity level with more standing and walking, did more yard work and less video gaming.  I cut out a number of stressful activities in my life.  Today, I’m still South Asian, I still have this mutation, and I’m not getting any younger. But I’m back to a healthy BMI. I have an active lifestyle, I e-mail my doctor regularly to keep in touch, and I have a well-documented family history of heart disease.  Most importantly, I’ll be regularly screened for HCM from here on out and that’s one disease that won’t catch me by surprise.
Results will vary due to unique differences in each individual’s DNA. On average users receive at least one or two results that may be relevant to proactively managing health. 23andMe&#8217;s service does not diagnose disease. 23andMe is not a substitute for professional medical or diagnostic advice.

Arnab Chowdry

My Heart, My Family, and MYBPC3

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-10499 size-medium" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/MomDad-291x300.jpg" alt="" width="291" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/MomDad-291x300.jpg 291w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/MomDad.jpg 677w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 291px) 100vw, 291px" />
My parents aren’t world-class athletes, but in the summer of 2009 they both competed in the Senior Olympics. They were representing their home state of Wyoming, where people – much less senior athletes – are few and far between.
It was at the Senior Olympics that my parents first encountered 23andMe. The company had set up a booth to test competing athletes, and my parents gladly sent off their spit sample. Both have a background in medicine – my father is a quasi-retired anesthesiologist and my mother is a retired dentist – but neither of them were familiar with the company or had much experience with genetics. Since then, however, they have become huge fans of 23andMe. Given that they were keen on 23andMe years before I started working here, their enthusiasm is more than just supportive parents happy to see their daughter gainfully employed. I asked my dad for his thoughts, both as a customer and as an anesthesiologist.
Genetics is a rapidly changing field, and my father went to medical school many years ago. I was curious what he was taught in school about genetics.
Me: What was your training in genetics?
Garry E. Rains, MD (Dad): In ancient times, when I went to medical school, genetics was mostly descriptions of syndromes, such as Down or Turner, and specific diseases, such as cystic fibrosis or Duchenne muscular dystrophy. As these conditions manifested in children, genetics was a subset of pediatrics. I learned very little of the science of molecular genetics, and still know very little about it. Remember, the Human Genome Project produced its first complete draft twenty-six years after I graduated from medical school.
Considering that genetics wasn’t a huge part of my dad’s training, I was curious if he thought genetics was important in his work and how he decides on the amount of medication that he gives patients.
Me: How does genetics affect your patients’ responses to drugs? For which treatments or conditions do you think genetic testing could be most beneficial?
Dad: Many of the drugs I use as an anesthesiologist manifest a sixteen-fold variability in response to a standard mg/kg dose. A core competency of anesthesiology is to apply monitoring devices to the patient to precisely assess the patient’s response to a drug, and then adjust dosing, and add other drugs appropriately, given the observed response of the patient. Much of patient response variability is driven by patient factors (age, sex, weight) and comorbidities (cardiovascular disease, renal disease, lung disease), plus the vagaries of the surgical procedure.
The patient’s genetics are also a factor. Pharmacogenomics is becoming more relevant to clinical practice every day, and I hope to soon routinely have patient genetic information as part of the preoperative workup. I expect pharmacogenomics to advance rapidly, and for clinical solutions to become available within a few years.
Stratified medicine is already being used in oncology wherein treatments are selected for breast, lung, and colorectal cancer after patient protein measurements. In anesthesiology, we currently try to customize care through the use of precise monitoring. Soon, we will know more about how the individual patient might handle the drugs as molecular profiling advances.
A current debate in the field of genetic testing is how genetic information should be distributed. Some people feel that genetic information should be directly available to consumers; others believe that genetic information should be distributed only by doctors and other trained professionals. I was curious whether my dad, as a doctor, had an opinion.
Me: What do you think of direct-to-consumer genetic testing?
Dad: I think it is a great idea. Personal genetic testing essentially allows one to access one’s medical family history in an expanded and detailed way. That information may be useful in a myriad of ways. Applying the information might require professional medical judgment, just as profitably applying stock quotes might require an investment advisor. In both cases, the decision to utilize professional help should be up to the individual buying the information. The SEC doesn’t regulate stock quotes, and the FDA should not be trying to regulate medical genetics data.
Because my parents have been 23andMe users since the 2009 Senior Olympics, I asked my dad for his reasons for sticking with the company (beyond being the supportive parents that they are).
Me: Why are you a 23andMe user?
Dad: While personal genetics is really just starting, useful information is already available. For example, I found out that I am at increased risk for [age-related] macular degeneration. I now see my ophthalmologist yearly to monitor my retina.
As new information becomes available, some might be actionable pursuant to health maintenance. That is potentially more important than the information I get from my Netflix subscription, and 23andMe costs less than Netflix.
Granted, my dad’s responses should be taken with a grain of salt; he was also wildly enthusiastic about my seventh grade science fair project. That being said, he isn’t the only anesthesiologist who is excited about the impact of genetics. Recently the blog GenomesUnzipped.org included a guest contribution from an anesthesiologist discussing one case study and recognizing the potential influence genetics may have on anesthesiology. At the very least, it seems that the days of genetics being relegated to a subset of pediatrics are over.
23andMe’s services are not a substitute for professional medical or diagnostic advice. &nbsp;Always consult your physician for medical or diagnostic advice.

Father Knows Best

It started innocently enough with a simple question from his daughter.
“Where did our family come from?”
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-full wp-image-9594" title="Vicksburg 014 Jan 08" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Vicksburg-014-Jan-08.jpg" alt="" width="226" height="170" />(Image from Larry Vick&#8217;s <a href="http://vickfamilyhistory.blogpost.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">blog</a>)
For 20 years Larry Vick has been trying to answer that question. His first source was a chart drawn up by an uncle, but since then Vick has turned to old Census files, birth certificates and historical documents to piece together his family tree. It’s grown to 40 pages that trace ancestors back to the early 1600s in colonial America and another branch of the family back to Germany.
He traced the origin of his family name, and created a whole website on the study of the <a href="http://vickfamilyhistory.blogspot.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">name Vick</a>.
Retired from the Air Force, Vick is fascinated by genealogy, so when he learned about “genetic genealogy” and the ability to trace ancestry through DNA, he decided to give it a try.
He first used 23andMe in 2009.
“My most distant (that I can identify) paternal line ancestor (Y-DNA) was Joseph Vick of Lower Parish, Isle of Wight Co., VA, born about 1640-1650,” Vick said. “My most distant maternal line ancestor (mtDNA) was Elizabeth, born about 1792 in NC.”
The test also revealed some surprises.
He noticed on his maternal line African ancestry. “I thought, ‘that’s an artifact,’” he said.
But what he found was that his mother’s 2nd great grandmother, Elizabeth Collins, probably did indeed have some mixed ancestry. She’d come from an area in Tennessee called Newman’s Ridge, where people often referred to themselves as “Black Dutch.” The population there – and in the Cumberland Gap area of Appalachia – was also referred to as “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melungeon" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Melungeon</a>,” tri-racial with a mix European, African and Native American ancestry.
Vick’s use of 23andMe’s ancestry finder also helped him track down a distant cousin – who also happened to share his interest in genealogy. They traced back their connection to a common ancestor in pre-revolutionary America. That story was picked up by CNN three years ago.
While Vick’s interest is primarily in the ancestry functions of 23andMe, he said the service offers more.
“At first I had no interest in the health side,” Vick said.
That has since changed he learned his granddaughter, who has also been tested by 23andMe, had a high risk for deep vein thrombosis. He immediately talked to his daughter. Since neither he nor his daughter had an elevated risk for deep vein thrombosis, it appeared his granddaughter had inherited this risk from his son-in-law’s side of the family. Because his son-in-law was adopted and did not know anything about his biological parents’ health history, the insight about this risk told them something they otherwise would not have known. This risk can be heightened for women who are also taking an oral contraception, hormone replacement or who are pregnant.
Vick said that because the number of people who use 23andMe, its power grows.
“It’s kind of like panning for gold, when you find a relative it can be golden,” he said.
23andMe provides genetic testing services for informational purposes; your results may or may not help you to search for or identify relatives or family members.
What&#8217;s your story? If you&#8217;re willing to share, we want to hear. Drop us a line at <a href="mailto:stories@23andme.com">stories@23andme.com</a>.

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