<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-17459 size-full" title="richard-with-adoptive-parents-lo-res" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/richard-with-adoptive-parents-lo-res.jpg" alt="" width="768" height="960" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/richard-with-adoptive-parents-lo-res.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/richard-with-adoptive-parents-lo-res-240x300.jpg 240w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/richard-with-adoptive-parents-lo-res-704x880.jpg 704w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" />Richard Hill as a child with his adoptive parents, Harold and Thelma Hill. 
Richard Hill spent his career working in the sciences and in marketing, but hearing about his decades-long search for family you get the sense he would have made a great detective.
While shoe leather helped him unravel much of the mystery of his birth, it wasn’t until the availability of personal genetic testing, including testing through 23andMe, that Richard completed the picture of his biological family.
“My search had lurched ahead and stalled repeatedly over 31 years,” he says in a book he wrote about his quest <a href="http://www.dna-testing-adviser.com/finding-family-book.html">Finding Family: My Search for Roots and Secrets in My DNA</a>. 
The gap in Richard’s history became apparent when he was 18. That’s when his doctor looked through his medical file and let slip that Richard had been adopted. He was stunned.
“My heart skipped a beat,” Richard said in his book.
‘“Excuse me?” I asked. I must have misheard him. Or maybe he had me confused with someone else. I’m Richard Hill, son of Harold and Thelma Hill. Surely, he must have someone else’s file in his hands.’
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-17460 size-full" title="Richard-Hill-01-HI-RES" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Richard-Hill-01-HI-RES.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="2100" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Richard-Hill-01-HI-RES.jpg 1500w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Richard-Hill-01-HI-RES-214x300.jpg 214w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Richard-Hill-01-HI-RES-768x1075.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Richard-Hill-01-HI-RES-731x1024.jpg 731w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Richard-Hill-01-HI-RES-629x880.jpg 629w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Richard-Hill-01-HI-RES-843x1180.jpg 843w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px" />
Find Him
Thus begins Richard’s saga, which is part memoir, part detective story. It details his search for family, and how after decades of using paper records and tracking down whoever knew any tidbit of information that could help, Richard finally turned to DNA testing from 23andMe and other services. These tests helped him identify first his late biological father’s surname and later confirmed his exact place in his large biological family.
His search wasn’t fueled by a sense of abandonment. Richard knew his parents loved him, and he in turn loved them. Whenever someone asks him about finding his “real” parents, Richard corrects them, saying his real parents were the couple who adopted him. But the search and the answers he found on the way helped him fill in missing pieces of his history.
“I have a great appreciation of my adoptive parents and how they raised me,” he said. “And this certainly has made me think about the whole nature versus nurture thing and what I got from my biological parents versus what I got from my adoptive parents. But it’s also made me feel more complete.”
Or as he says in the book, “many of us (adoptees) will never know peace until we know all the pieces.”
Richard said that although he learned about being adopted at 18, his career and family all got in the way of seeking out more information about his birth parents. Digging into his adoption didn’t start in earnest until he was in his 30s after his father was bedridden by a stroke. He’d visit his dad often during that time and he would sit at his father’s bedside and talk. At one point, as if freeing a burden that had weighed on him all those years, his father said, ‘Well I guess you know you were adopted?”
His father went on to reveal the first bits of information Richard had ever heard about his biological mother. She was “a cute little Irish girl” and her name was “Jackie.” He added one more fascinating piece: that she had had another son. So Richard learned that somewhere out there he had a brother. His father suggested that Richard should find him.
<div style="float: right; text-align: justified; width: 200px; background-color: #eee; padding: 15px; margin-left: 10px;">
Ancestry Tools You Can Use
Not everyone’s family story is cloaked in mystery like Richard Hill’s. Most of us just want to learn a little more about our history and gain insight into the generations from which we descended.
23andMe’s Ancestry tools can help you explore what your genetics says about your ancestry. Some of the insights can only be had through genetics. When used with other information – whether it’s your family’s oral traditions, names of ancestors in a family Bible, or other paper records – your 23andMe results can become even more powerful.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-thumbnail wp-image-14613" title="ancestry dashboard" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/ancestry-dashboard-200x200.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="200" />
</div>
“Bingo”
When Richard started looking, he almost immediately faced daunting obstacles and dead ends. For instance, although he found the identity of his biological mother, he quickly learned that she’d died a little over a year after his birth. With a lot of work and luck, he was able to connect with her son, his half-brother. The two met for the first time in 1981.
But finding Richard’s biological father seemed impossible: He had no name – the one on his original birth certificate was the name of his birth mother’s ex-husband. In addition, his mother never told anyone who fathered her second child. The pregnancy itself was a secret and she had left town for the delivery. Still, none of that stopped Richard from searching. He did this by painstakingly piecing together his mother’s life at the time of his conception in 1945, and then contacting people who knew her or worked with her at the time and were still alive.
It took years. At one point he thought he’d found his birth father only to learn, after a paternity test, that he was wrong. That didn’t stop him either.
Finally, with the advent of early genetic tests that traced Y-DNA, the paternal line, Richard matched a distant cousin whose surname might also be that of his father. That provided a vital clue. He went back to some of the records he’d accumulated in his search. His mother had worked at a bar called Dann’s Tavern. Looking at old records he noticed that the name of the bar’s owner matched the surname he’d dug up.
“Bingo,” Richard thought.
Correcting a Mistake
Although the bar was long gone, and its owner dead and buried, Richard was able to find a niece of the man. He learned the owner was one of five brothers, and all of them were now deceased. So Richard started contacting sons of each man, asking if they would agree to a DNA test to determine if they were siblings. But unlike 23andMe’s test that now reads more than a million points in your genome, the only test available then looked at just 15 genetic markers to estimate family relationships. That test led him to identify the wrong man as his father and the wrong children as his siblings. It took a few more years, and a test by 23andMe and a test by FTDNA, to figure out that he’d made the mistake.
The two tools he used to correct the mistake were 23andMe’s Relative Finder and FTDNA’s Family Finder. The first test was on a man he thought was a cousin, but after getting the results back from 23andMe, it was clear that this man was actually his half brother.
“DNA testing helped me and it can help others,” Richard said.
His years of searching and his use of DNA testing has also made him a go-to source for others turning to genetic testing for more answers about their ancestry. He set up a website, <a href="http://www.dna-testing-adviser.com">www.dna-testing-adviser.com</a>, to help people make sense of the different tools out there.   And even with the ups and downs of his family search, he doesn’t regret a thing.
&#8220;I did not have to give up anybody in my adopted family. It&#8217;s not an either-or thing. You&#8217;re just adding on. You can&#8217;t have too much family.&#8221;

23andMe Blog

23andMe Blog Team

23andMe’s Tools Help Solve Ancestry Mystery

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-full wp-image-7425" title="ancestry-photo-sheridan" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/ancestry-photo-sheridan.png" alt="" width="280" height="152" />
We first met <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-and-you/23andme-how-to/ancestry-at-23andme-introducing-sheridan/">Sheridan</a>* in the fall of 2010. As an adoptee, she was curious about her DNA and what 23andMe might be able to tell her.
With the help of old friends and some new ones on 23andMe, Sheridan learned about her <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-and-you/23andme-how-to/ancestry-at-23andme-sheridans-global-origins/">global origins</a>,  which include an African-American father and a mother of European descent, and <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-and-you/23andme-how-to/ancestry-at-23andme-sheridans-got-relatives/">connected with DNA relatives</a>.
She even discovered that she and her good friend Brian are <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-and-you/23andme-how-to/ancestry-at-23andme-finding-connections/">4th cousins</a>, which means she has some Irish ancestry. Together, they <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-and-you/23andme-how-to/ancestry-at-23andme-old-roots-and-new-horizons/">figured out a branch of her family tree</a>.

<div style="float: right; width: 300px; padding: 15px; margin-left: 15px; margin-top: 5px; border: 1px solid #ccc; background-color: #ffc;">
For a quick Ancestry primer, check out:
<a href="https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-and-you/genetics-101/ancestry-at-23andme-what-can-you-learn/">Ancestry at 23andMe: What Can You Learn?</a>
Follow Sheridan’s journey from the beginning:*
<a href="https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-and-you/23andme-how-to/ancestry-at-23andme-introducing-sheridan/">Introducing Sheridan</a> 
<a href="https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-and-you/23andme-how-to/ancestry-at-23andme-sheridans-global-origins/">Sheridan’s Global Origins</a> 
<a href="https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-and-you/23andme-how-to/ancestry-at-23andme-sheridans-got-relatives/">Sheridan’s Got Relatives</a> 
<a href="https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-and-you/23andme-how-to/ancestry-at-23andme-finding-connections/">Finding Connections</a> 
<a href="https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-and-you/23andme-how-to/ancestry-at-23andme-old-roots-and-new-horizons/">Old Roots and New Horizons</a>
*Sheridan and her story are works of fiction and any resemblance to actual people or events is purely coincidental.
</div>
<h6>Using DNA Relatives</h6>
For Sheridan, learning about herself on 23andMe did more than just kindle a love for the Irish. By combining the information she learned about her ancestral origins with information from some of the <a href="https://www.23andme.com/dna-ancestry/">DNA Relatives</a> she found, she and Brian were able to fill in the first pieces of her genealogical history.
Since then, Sheridan’s filled in even more of the family tree on her mother’s side.
Her second cousin Mike, identified through 23andMe as a DNA Relative, was able to track down the name of his grandmother’s sister &#8212; a woman very likely to be Sheridan’s own grandmother. To Brian’s delight, Mike also found the name of his grandmother’s sister’s husband, a Fitzpatrick descended from the same Irish ancestors as Brian.
<h6>Neanderthal</h6>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft wp-image-17249 size-medium" title="Neanderthal-friends-sheridan" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Neanderthal-friends-sheridan-272x300.png" alt="" width="272" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Neanderthal-friends-sheridan-272x300.png 272w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Neanderthal-friends-sheridan-768x849.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Neanderthal-friends-sheridan-927x1024.png 927w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Neanderthal-friends-sheridan-796x880.png 796w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Neanderthal-friends-sheridan-1068x1180.png 1068w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Neanderthal-friends-sheridan.png 1192w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 272px) 100vw, 272px" />
Brian always kept her in the loop on 23andMe, though. Some more mutual friends joined and they quickly started sharing on 23andMe. Sheridan remembers when the <a href="https://www.23andme.com/you/labs/neanderthal/">Neanderthal Ancestry feature</a> came out. There was an unofficial contest over who had the most <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry/find-your-inner-neanderthal/">Neanderthal DNA</a>; Brian was disappointed that he was solidly average for a Northern European person. Sheridan tried to cheer him up by pointing out that he still had the most caveman of their friends with mostly European ancestry.
“Besides,” she said, “I only have 2.2 percent Neanderthal!”
“That’s because Neanderthals were never even in Africa to begin with,” he snorted, but he seemed mollified.
Sheridan, far from feeling shortchanged, found it fascinating that even a small percentage of her DNA could be traced back to these prehistoric “cousins.”
<h6>Ancestry Composition</h6>
But Brian’s Stone Age enthusiasm paled in comparison to his excitement over Ancestry Composition. A new and improved replacement for the popular Ancestry Painting feature, <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry/23andmes-newest-feature-explores-your-ancestry/">Ancestry Composition</a> gives a much more detailed breakdown of a person’s genetic ancestry. Brian called Sheridan at two in the morning when it came out.
“It’s here!” he exclaimed when she groggily answered the phone.
“Unghh wha&#8211;?” she mumbled.
“Ancestry Composition! Like Ancestry Painting, but way better. Remember? Your Ancestry Painting was cool, but your Composition is even cooler. Mine’s still kind of boring, though. But you should look at yours! And I can see it split it up by which side I got from my mom and which side from my dad and you can zoom in and out and change the thresholds&#8230; hey, you still there? Sheridan? Hello?”
So maybe two in the morning wasn’t the best time for Brian to tell Sheridan about Ancestry Composition. But the next day they met up at the coffee shop to explore the new feature together.
Brian quickly explained that 23andMe had updated its main ancestry feature with lots of examples of people with full ancestry from different parts of the world &#8212; like South Asia, France, or Finland. Some of these people were part of research studies and their genetic data is publicly available. But many of the people 23andMe used to develop its ancestry analysis are 23andMe customers themselves.
“Of course, you can only learn what, say, ‘Welsh DNA’ looks like if you have some examples of it,” he said. “The more examples you can learn from, the better your analysis will be. And 23andMe has a lot of different types of examples.”
<img decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-17254" title="Brian-composition" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Brian-composition-700x421.png" alt="" width="350" />
Brian clicked on the ‘+’ symbol in the “Resolution” bar to zoom in. “It’s still all European for me &#8212; no surprise &#8212; but now it can break it down into sub-regions.” The list of ancestries on the right of the screen expanded as he clicked and when he hovered the mouse pointer over the darker blue ring the map zoomed in to the British Isles.
“See? 99% British and Irish!” he said, puffing out his chest, which today was sporting, perhaps not accidentally, a green “Kiss me, I’m Irish!” t-shirt.
Sheridan rolled her eyes.
“Ok, ok, you were saying mine was cooler, though, right?”
“Oh, right. Yeah.”
Sheridan scooted him aside and pulled her Ancestry Composition up on the screen. The rings quickly morphed into concentric stacks of bright colors with a rainbow-colored map in the middle.
“Ooh,” she breathed. “Yeah, that’s pretty cool.”
<img decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-17299" title="sheridan-composition" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/sheridan-composition-700x500.png" alt="" width="700" />
According to the new analysis, Sheridan’s DNA was about 62% European, 37% Sub-Saharan African, and 1.2% East Asian or Native American. The rest of her DNA was unassigned, meaning it couldn’t be mapped confidently to any specific population.
&#8220;Africa isn&#8217;t broken down into sub-regions yet the way Europe is,&#8221; Brian said, pointing to the pink stripe, &#8220;but 23andMe is going to update this soon.&#8221;
&#8220;Hm, I guess I can wait a little longer,&#8221; said Sheridan. &#8220;It&#8217;s nice to see all the European populations, though. Look, there’s the Irish ancestry for me, too!”
She already knew that she probably had some Irish ancestry based on the fact that she and 99% Irish Brian were 4th cousins and they’d traced their Irish family connection through her second cousin Mike, but it was somehow gratifying to see it spelled out so clearly on her screen. She could also see that she had some Eastern European and even a bit of Native American ancestry.
<img decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-17257" title="Miguel-composition" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Miguel-composition-300x161.png" alt="" width="350" /> 
<img decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-17258" title="Mesut-composition" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Mesut-composition-300x154.png" alt="" width="350" /> 
<img decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-17262" title="Ancestry Composition Native American" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Ancestry-Composition-Native-American-700x331.png" alt="" width="350" />
There was also a small dark blue band in her Composition labeled as “Ashkenazi”.
“That might actually be interesting,” Brian mused, “Let’s look into that later.”
For now, Ancestry Composition kept them busy as they explored their friends’ results. Miguel had a colorful Composition like Sheridan, except it had much more Native American and much less African. Mesut, Sheridan’s Turkish friend, was mainly Middle Eastern and European.
“Did Camille know she has Native American ancestry?” she asked, pointing to the 3.3% Native American in her Ancestry Composition.
“Not before she did 23andMe,” said Brian. “When she saw that result she did some digging and it turns out that her paternal grandfather was one-eighth <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ojibwe_people">Chippewa</a>!”
He went to the drop down menu and selected another friend of theirs, Jamie. “This is pretty cool, too. Jamie’s half Askhenazi Jewish, and since her parents are also on 23andMe you can use the ‘Split View’ setting to see which side of the family it’s from.”
The map in the middle disappeared and the labels “Father” and “Mother appeared on either side of a vertical line splitting the colored rings in half. Sheridan could see that the Ashkenazi ancestry was clearly from Jamie’s mother’s side.
“Wow, that’s cool,” said Sheridan.
She thought for a second.
“So if I do end up learning who my mother is, and if I’m able to find her, and if she wants to do 23andMe&#8230; would this be able to tell me more about my father’s side, too?”
Brian nodded.
“That’ a lot of ‘ifs’, but yeah, I think so. You just need one parent for it to tell which half of your DNA came from that parent. Then by default, the other half came from the other parent.”
“Whew.” Sheridan sat back. “This whole genetic ancestry thing just got even more interesting.”
To be continued&#8230;

Ancestry at 23andMe: New Insights for Sheridan

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter 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" />
December was a busy month for 23andMe and in the midst of the hubbub we put out <a href="https://www.23andme.com/ancestry_composition_guide/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Ancestry Composition</a>, an amazing feature that gives finer detail of an individual’s heritage going back generations.
Since its release, we’ve heard some great feedback saying the feature has set a new standard in the industry. Yeah, we think so too, but don’t just take our word on it.
Genetic genealogist CeCe Moore recently reviewed the top genetic ancestry tools on the market. Her conclusion after looking at them all? 23andMe’s Ancestry Composition is “the most informative and flexible” of the lot.
CeCe hasn’t been the only one to review the new feature favorably, particularly for its ability to return meaningful results for people of mixed ancestry, but as always she does so with a lot of insight into how to use these tools.
In the review, CeCe notes that she has relationships with all the services she reviews, including 23andMe, where she advocates on behalf of customers as one of our volunteer Ancestry Ambassadors.
Her popular blog Your Genetic Genealogist has become a go-to site for anyone interested in using both traditional genealogical search tools along with genetics. CeCe, who also works as a television producer and is a Southern California Regional Coordinator for the International Society of Genetic Genealogy, has a lot to say about Ancestry Composition and even has a few nits about the feature. We will address many of them over time.
Take a look at CeCe’s review and see what else she has to say about the wonderful world of genetic genealogy.

23andMe’s Ancestry Composition Driving Circles Around the Rest

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-17038 size-full" title="Mike &amp; Eric" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Mike-Eric.jpg" alt="" width="1721" height="1190" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Mike-Eric.jpg 1721w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Mike-Eric-300x207.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Mike-Eric-768x531.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Mike-Eric-1024x708.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Mike-Eric-880x608.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Mike-Eric-1180x816.jpg 1180w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1721px) 100vw, 1721px" />Mike and Eric
Our team rolled out a new feature called<a href="https://www.23andme.com/about/press/ancestry_composition_2012"> Ancestry Composition</a> last week that will tell you more about what you’re made of, or more precisely, the geographic origins of your DNA.
Principal Product Scientist Mike Macpherson, former Research Scientist Chuong “Tom” Do, and Computational Biologist Eric Durand led the team that spent many months developing an innovative and accurate tool to determine your ancestry going as far back as 500 years.
One of the stunning aspects of Ancestry Composition is that it&#8217;s based on the newest advances in machine learning and thus will get better over time.
“Ancestry Composition is truly innovative. Not only does it use public-genetic databases for reference, it also uses the data set from 23andMe, so as more people join 23andMe, the more powerful and more accurate Ancestry Composition will become,” Mike said.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-17039 size-full" title="European and Native American Ancestry" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Native-American.jpg" alt="" width="807" height="468" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Native-American.jpg 807w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Native-American-300x174.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Native-American-768x445.jpg 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 807px) 100vw, 807px" />
The feature can very accurately detail the mosaic of your ancestral background, distinguishing British and Irish ancestry, for instance, or telling you the breakdown of your Scandinavian or Italian ancestral origins. It’s also a powerful tool for finding Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry.
Right now, Ancestry Composition is particularly interesting for people of mixed ancestry: individuals who have Native American, Latino, African American or mixed European heritage.
It’s a great tool already and promises to keep getting better.
An update is planned in the near future to add more detail for people with African and Asian ancestry.
This will give a finer level of detail and help customers zero in on the regions of their ancestral origins.
But the feature can be enlightening for people of any background offering a view of an individual’s genetic ancestry, breaking down the mix of ancestry by percentage and putting it all into an intuitive visualization.
There are several other bells and whistles for those who want to dive in and find a few fun surprises.
One of those is the Split View, which gives great detail for customers who have at least one parent also in the 23andMe community. If at least one parent has been tested and is linked through the Family Tree feature, Ancestry Composition’s Split View will tell you what mix of your ancestry comes from your mother and <a href="https://www.23andme.com/dna-ancestry/">what mix of your ancestry</a> comes from your father.
Another add-on to the feature is a Chromosome View, which “paints” the ancestry on each of your 23 chromosomes.
If you’d like to see more detail on how this has done you can look both at a<a href="https://www.23andme.com/ancestry_composition_guide/"> white paper</a> put together by Mike or a recent<a href="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/20121027_ancestry_painting_methods_poster.pdf"> poster presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics</a>, which outlines the technique.
The new feature replaces 23andMe’s “ancestry painting” and “global similarity,” two tools that were equally pioneering when they were first introduced.
But with Ancestry Composition 23andMe breaks new ground and sets a new standard for determining genetic ancestry.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-17041 size-full" title="split view" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/split-view.jpg" alt="" width="1744" height="911" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/split-view.jpg 1744w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/split-view-300x157.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/split-view-768x401.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/split-view-1024x535.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/split-view-880x460.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/split-view-1180x616.jpg 1180w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1744px) 100vw, 1744px" />

23andMe’s Newest Feature Explores Your Ancestry

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-16670 size-full" title="Mayim's connections" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Mayims-connections-e1674589980933.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="435" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Mayims-connections-e1674589980933.jpg 450w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Mayims-connections-e1674589980933-300x290.jpg 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px" />
We plead guilty to occasionally geeking out on genetics, so it’s nice to see when someone else does it too.
In September, Moment Magazine got all nerdy and wrote about their<a href="http://www.momentmag.com/the-moment-magazine-great-dna-experiment/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> Great DNA Experiment</a>, in which they look at the 23andMe results of 15 notable Americans of Jewish ancestry and make some interesting genetic connections. It’s a good illustration of how our DNA can tell us about our interconnectedness.
The piece shows it’s not “six degrees” that separates these individuals from each other, but, in all but one case, no degrees of separation. This means that these individuals are all directly related to one another, albeit in most cases distantly. This was also news to the 15 participants.
All but one of the individuals has Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry. The one exception is Linda Chavez, the political commentator, who descended from Conversos, indivduals of Jewish and Muslim ancestry who converted to Catholicism during the Inquisition. Her ancestors eventually settled in New Mexico. But even in her case, although she isn’t directly related to any of the group, she is connected to each of the others individuals focused on in the piece by just one other individual in the 23andMe database.
The connections shown in the article are what prompted The New York Times columnist David Brooks and NPR “All Things Considered” host Robert Siegel to joke about learning they were distant cousins, sharing a common ancestor several generations back. Brooks kidded that he was “most surprised that our ancestors worked together on National Schetl Radio, on a program called ‘All Pogroms Considered.’” (Maybe the line needs a drum roll to work.)
The article shows the genetic connections between people like Mayim Bialik, the actress on the Big Bang Theory, and Stephen Dubner, co-author of Freakonomics. Or the connections between NPR’s Siegel, and Harvard Law professor, Alan Dershowitz, or his connections to 23andMe’s CEO’s mother Esther Wojcicki, a journalist and teacher. The magazine shows the connections and the amount of shared DNA, measured in centimorgans (cMs), to illustrate the “relatedness” of any two individuals. More closely related individuals share more DNA.
So why is all this interesting?
It is a very specific example of unexpected connectedness. We&#8217;ve written about this <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/news/make-that-three-degrees-of-separation/">interconnectedness before</a>. We’ve even seen unexpected connectedness <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry/23andmes-three-degrees-of-separation/">among 23andMe employees</a>. Even in cases with people who have vastly different backgrounds and experiences, one can use genetics to create a short chain of people to connect any two individuals to each other. A little geeky, yes, but pretty cool nonetheless.

Using 23andMe to Make Connections

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-15111 size-medium" title="Got Neanderthal?" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Got-Neanderthal-300x206.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="206" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Got-Neanderthal-300x206.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Got-Neanderthal.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Not everyone would embrace their inner caveman, but in <a href="https://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_evolution/2012/10/neanderthal_and_denisovan_genetics_human_ancestors_interbred_with_extinct.single.html#pagebreak_anchor_2" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">today’s Slate</a> Ann Gibbons sure did.
<a href="http://www.anngibbons.com/">Gibbons</a>, who also writes for Science, is the author of the book The First Human: The Race to Discover Our Earliest Ancestors. Over almost two decades, she’s delved into the discoveries around human evolution.
In her Slate piece she writes about getting tested by 23andMe. While she was interested in her European ancestry, what really drew her in was the portion of her results that showed she has 2.9 percent Neanderthal DNA.
For someone who has spent years writing about the march of mankind from our earliest ancestors to the emergence of modern humans, finding a tangible link to the past is powerful stuff. The PBS show NOVA scienceNOW recently aired a piece that nicely crafts a story about <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evolution/what-makes-us-human-pro.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">what it means to humans</a> to share Neanderthal DNA.
For a lot of us here, although Neanderthals disappeared long ago, it&#8217;s most intriguing that their DNA continues to live on in all non-African people. It may be that the DNA of other prehistoric human groups also are intermixed in our own DNA. Much like with Neanderthals, scientists extracted ancient DNA from the skeletal remains of another ancient cousin known as the Denisovans. The remains – a finger bone – was found in a cave in Siberia, showed that Denisovans were cousins of Neanderthals, who lived in Asia and disappeared about 40,000 years ago. Their DNA is found today in Melanasians.
As for Neanderthals, 23andMe launched our popular Neanderthal Lab about a year ago. It allows customers to determine what percentage of their DNA is Neanderthal. A typical range is between 1 percent and 4 percent with the average being about 2.5 percent, but there are outliers, who have much more.
Check out these posts about Neanderthals and Humans: 
&#8211; <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/did-humans-and-neanderthals-have-sex/">Did Humans and Neanderthals Have Sex?</a> 
&#8211;<a href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/find-your-inner-neanderthal"> Find Your Inner Neanderthal</a> 
&#8211;<a href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/new-evidence-suggests-interbreeding-between-humans-and-neanderthals"> New Evidence Suggests Humans and Neanderthal Interbreeding</a>
<div style="padding: 10px; margin-top: 15px; margin-bottom: 15px; font-size: 12px; border: 1px solid #ccc;">
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-14049" title="neanderthal icon" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/neanderthal-icon-96x150.jpg" alt="" width="50" height="77" />
Got Neanderthal DNA?
23andMe customers can find their inner Neanderthal or at least how much Neanderthal DNA they have at <a href=" https://www.23andme.com/you/labs/neanderthal/">23andMe Ancestry Labs</a>. Not yet a customer? <a href="https://www.23andme.com/store">Visit our store</a>!
</div>

More On 23andMe’s Neanderthal Lab

by Emily Chang, Joanna Mountain, and Mike Macpherson
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-15198 size-medium" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Haplogroup10-300x193.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="193" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Haplogroup10-300x193.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Haplogroup10-768x495.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Haplogroup10-1024x660.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Haplogroup10-880x567.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Haplogroup10-1180x760.jpg 1180w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /> 
 Click on the image above for a larger version of this chart, which shows that some ancestry combinations are more common than others in the 23andMe database.
Given the United States&#8217;s “melting pot” nature, it is not surprising that most Americans have mixed ancestry.
Like many of my fellow citizens, my ancestry is a long recipe: a bit of English, a dash of German, a pinch of Hungarian. Should my husband and I have kids, my children will have Chinese ancestry, too. Such mixed ancestry is becoming increasingly the norm, and genetics turns out to be a very useful tool to explore it.
Traditionally, genetic ancestry focused on two particular pieces of DNA, mitochondrial DNA and the Y-chromosome.  Your maternal line includes your mother, your maternal grandmother, her mother before her, and so on; likewise, your paternal line includes your father, your paternal father, his father before him, and so on. The paternal line is determined using the Y chromosome, which determines whether a person is male and only men can pass down. The maternal line is determined using the DNA found inside mitochondria, small energy-producing cellular machines with their own genetic blueprints.
Both men and women have mitochondrial DNA, but only women pass on their mitochondrial DNA to children.
These days, genetic ancestry tools like 23andMe use DNA from all of your 23 pairs of chromosomes to offer insights into your heritage.  However, information about maternal and paternal lines, which can reflect ancestral origins, can yield interesting insights.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-15199 size-medium" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/MaternalPaternalLines-300x283.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="283" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/MaternalPaternalLines-300x283.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/MaternalPaternalLines.jpg 400w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /> This figure shows the paternal line in blue and the maternal line in pink. Your maternal grandmother and paternal grandfather are members of your maternal and paternal lines, respectively.
Our large customer database shows that some ancestry combinations are more common than others among our customers. Given a pair of ancestral origins, there are two ways to combine the maternal and paternal lines: a maternal line of the first ancestry with a paternal line of the second ancestry or a paternal line of the first ancestry with a maternal line of the second ancestry.
Our database shows that these two ways of combining the maternal and paternal lines are not equally common, indicating gender trends in mating. For instance, about 3.5 times as many 23andMe customers have a maternal line indicative of African ancestry and a paternal line indicative of European ancestry than the reverse. This mating trend probably reflects, in part, a disgraceful period in the United States&#8217; past in which white male slave owners fathered children with enslaved African American women rather than recent trends in interracial marriages. More recent marriage patterns actually reflect a trend in the opposite direction.
The 2010 US census shows that a “white” wife and “black” husband is 2.3 times more common than a “white” husband and “black” wife [note: the terms “black” and “white” were the descriptors used in the US census report].
The maternal and paternal lines of the 23andMe customers, thus, tell the sad truth of the treatment of enslaved African American women. In one episode of the television program Finding Your Roots, Condoleezza Rice says this aspect of United States history is an “unhealed wound in America” and that we have trouble talking about what really happened during slavery. She is right. Most of us would rather not talk about the rape of enslaved African American women, but DNA isn’t shy about addressing this ugly truth. As we study and learn about these genetic patterns, we face one of the most disturbing aspects of United States history &#8212; a vital step towards healing that unhealed wound to which Rice referred.
<div style="border: 1px solid #000; padding: 15px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 15px; width: 300px; float: right; margin-left: 15px; margin-top: 5px;">
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-12163" style="float: left; margin-right: 15px;" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/JRBgdIBXKIeVIdETJrxYIw_ttam_logo.jpg" alt="" width="24" height="40" /> Learn more about <a href="https://www.23andme.com/you/ancestry">your ancestry</a> in your  23andMe account.
Not yet a customer? Visit our <a href="https://www.23andme.com/store/cart/">store</a> or <a href="https://www.23andme.com/ancestry">learn more</a>.
</div>
A similar but less extreme pattern was observed for individuals of Asian and European ancestry; about 1.7 times as many 23andMe customers have a European paternal line in conjunction with an Asian maternal line than have an Asian paternal line with a European maternal line. The reason for this particular mating trend can not be traced to slavery and may have more complex sociological and historical origins.  Regardless of its source, however, the trend is supported by other studies. The large <a href="http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/02/16/the-rise-of-intermarriage/">PEW study</a> on interracial marriage released this past February which observed that Asian American women were more likely to have an interracial marriage than Asian American men, and the US Census Bureau, which captures a wider segment of our society than the 23andMe database, shows an even stronger trend &#8212; a “white” husband and “Asian” wife is 2.4 times more common than a “white” wife and “Asian” husband [note: the terms “Asian” and “white” were the descriptors used in the US census report].
Our DNA holds a lot of information. It tells us who we are and who we, collectively, were. The mating trends seen in the maternal and paternal lines of 23andMe customers reflect complex sociological and historical truths, even some historical truths that are difficult to face. Genetics helps us learn more about who we are and who we were, hoping that such knowledge will translate into less racism and more appreciation for people who are different from ourselves.

Emily Chang

Who Planted The Family Tree?

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-6445" title="elderly_1" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/elderly_1-300x199.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="199" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/elderly_1-300x199.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/elderly_1.jpg 425w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
A study published in March in the journal <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0032840">PLoS ONE</a> suggests that having more African ancestry is associated with higher risk for type 2 diabetes.
Type 2 diabetes is one of the most common chronic diseases in the United States, affecting about 26 million people and more than 25% of the population over the age of 65. While most people realize that lifestyle factors like an unhealthy diet and lack of exercise increase the risk of developing the disease, many may not realize that ancestry plays a role, too. In fact, type 2 diabetes strikes non-white ethnic groups at higher rates, with African Americans experiencing the highest rates of all. 
 
Higher rates of obesity and heart disease, and lower socioeconomic status in the African American population certainly contribute to this trend, but, as <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0032840">this study</a> found, those factors aren’t the whole story. Led by Ching-Yu Cheng and Linda Kao from Johns Hopkins University, the research team analyzed DNA from more than 7,000 African Americans and found that those with the most (&gt; 87.5%) African ancestry had about 33% higher odds of type 2 diabetes compared to those with the least (&lt; 80.5%) African ancestry after accounting for body mass index (BMI) and socioeconomic status.
<div style="padding: 10px; margin-left: 15px; float: right; border: 1px solid #ccc; width: 280px;">
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-12163" title="small_23andMe_logo" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/JRBgdIBXKIeVIdETJrxYIw_ttam_logo.jpg" alt="" width="24" height="40" />
See your <a href="https://www.23andme.com/you/ancestry">ancestry breakdown</a> in your 23andMe account.
Not yet a customer? <a href="https://www.23andme.com/store">Visit our store</a>!
</div>
A person’s ancestry can be traced back to various regions of the world (e.g., Europe, Asia, and Africa) using genetic markers that are known to be indicative of those ancestral groups. On average, the African Americans in the study had about 84% African ancestry.
Cheng and Kao’s findings add further support to the idea that differences in disease rates across different populations can be partly explained by ancestry genetics. A previous study looking at <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/the-ancestry-link-for-atrial-fibrillation-risk">atrial fibrillation (a heart rhythm disorder) in African Americans</a> also found that having more African ancestry correlated with higher odds of the condition. Most likely, correlations like these reflect variations in the frequency of many different genetic factors involved in disease. In a few cases, though, individual genetic factors can have greater importance. For example, in East Asians, who have some of the highest rates of esophageal cancer in the world, a specific genetic factor causing the “<a href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/researchers-warn-that-physicians-need-to-ask-about-alcohol-flushing-to-reduce-esophageal-cancer-risk">alcohol flush</a>” reaction plays a direct role in the development of esophageal cancer.
Studies like this one highlight the complex interplay between ancestry and health in African Americans, the vast majority of whom can trace significant parts of their ancestry back to at least two continents. Combined with <a href="https://www.23andme.com/ancestry/recent/">DNA-based tools</a> that allow people to see their <a href="https://www.23andme.com/dna-ancestry/">ancestral breakdown</a>, health risk assessments that incorporate genetic ancestry may help make healthcare more personalized.

African Ancestry and Risk for Type 2 Diabetes

Ancestry Service — Page 25