Editor&#8217;s note: (June 4, 2024) This blog post has been updated from the original.



 The history and culture of Ashkenazi Jewish people, the waves of persecution, pogroms, and communal isolation over centuries help explain the genetic uniqueness of Ashkenazi ancestry and its implications on health.



While people of Ashkenazi ancestry have deep roots in Eastern and Central Europe, their ancestral lines trace back further to areas in the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3032072/?tool=pmcentrez" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Middle East</a>.&nbsp;



For people of <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/detail-for-ashkenazi-ancestry" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Ashkenazi ancestry</a>, it is in Europe that a drastic reduction in the population&#8217;s size and communal isolation became so profound that they created what geneticists call a&nbsp;<a href="https://news.berkeley.edu/2022/06/23/bottlenecks-that-reduced-genetic-diversity-were-common-throughout-human-history/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&#8220;population bottleneck.&#8221;</a>&nbsp;



Factors like disease outbreaks, geographic isolation, mass migration, and persecution can all contribute to population bottlenecks. This was particularly true for Ashkenazi Jewish communities, who faced centuries of discrimination and displacement. Such events drastically reduce a population&#8217;s size, limiting its genetic diversity. Over generations, this can lead to distinct genetic characteristics and a higher prevalence of certain inherited conditions within the Ashkenazi Jewish population.



That happened among Ashkenazi Jewish communities in Central and Eastern Europe. Our DNA Health + Ancestry Service can help you learn more about your ancestry and genetic health.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-ashkenazi-ancestry-and-risk-for-certain-genetic-conditions">Ashkenazi Ancestry and Risk for Certain Genetic Conditions</h2>



Understanding this history of isolation helps explain why people with&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/detail-for-ashkenazi-ancestry" rel="noreferrer noopener">Ashkenazi ancestry</a>&nbsp;are more likely to carry genetic variants that cause certain single-gene recessive Mendelian conditions such as<a target="_blank" href="https://www.23andme.com/topics/carrier/gaucher-disease-type-1/" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;Gaucher disease</a>,<a target="_blank" href="https://www.23andme.com/topics/carrier/canavan-disease/" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;Canavan disease</a>, and<a target="_blank" href="https://www.23andme.com/topics/carrier/tay-sachs-disease" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;Tay-Sachs disease</a>.&nbsp;



In addition, people with Ashkenazi ancestry are more likely to carry the so-called &#8220;founder variants&#8221; in the<a target="_blank" href="https://www.23andme.com/brca/" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;BRCA1 and BRCA2, increasing</a>&nbsp;the risk of breast, ovarian, and prostate cancer.&nbsp;



It also helps explain why people of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry are <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1002559" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">more than&nbsp;twice as likely</a> to develop <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/genetics-crohns-ashkenazi" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Crohn&#8217;s disease</a>&nbsp;compared to those of other European ancestry.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Tracing the History of Ashkenazi Jewish Ancestry</h2>



People of Ashkenazi ancestry first migrated to Southern Europe from Western Asia around 2,000 years ago.&nbsp;



Then — in the Middle Ages — many Jewish people living in southern Europe moved north. They primarily settled in northeastern France and western Germany near the Rhine River. It was there that their distinct religious, cultural, and Ashkenazi Jewish identity formed.&nbsp;



The word &#8220;Ashkenazi&#8221; is thought to come from the name &#8220;Ashkenaz,&#8221; a descendant of Noah named in the Hebrew Bible.



Although Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry is under the umbrella of &#8220;European ancestry,&#8221; it&#8217;s clear from numerous studies that people of&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/detail-for-ashkenazi-ancestry" rel="noreferrer noopener">Ashkenazi ancestry</a>&nbsp;are distinct from other European populations.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Ashkenazi Ancestry and Other Jewish Ancestry</h2>



While most people with Ashkenazi ancestry trace their DNA to Eastern and Central Europe, they are often more genetically like other Jewish populations — such as Sephardic Jews or Jewish groups with roots in Iran, Iraq, or Syria — than other Europeans.&nbsp;



People with European ancestry are genetically distinct from those of Asian or African descent. What is less obvious is that genetic variation also exists within European groups.



<figure class="wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-default is-cropped wp-block-gallery-1 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex">
<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="648" height="652" data-id="13179" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/between-3-variation.png" alt="" class="wp-image-13179" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/between-3-variation.png 648w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/between-3-variation-150x150.png 150w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/between-3-variation-298x300.png 298w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 648px) 100vw, 648px" /></figure>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="827" height="770" data-id="13182" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/within-variation.png" alt="" class="wp-image-13182" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/within-variation.png 827w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/within-variation-300x279.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/within-variation-768x715.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 827px) 100vw, 827px" /></figure>
</figure>



In these plots from a&nbsp;<a href="http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pgen.1002559" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">study by Eimear Kenny</a>, you can see the genetic variation between major ancestral groups (left) and within a population (right). Jewish groups fall into the European cluster on the left. 



But people with Ashkenazi ancestry (blue) form a unique cluster. That cluster is distinct mainly from Caucasian (CEU; green) and other Jewish populations (various colors) on the right. Individuals who are part Ashkenazi fall between the Caucasian and Ashkenazi clusters.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-persecution-isolation-and-the-ashkenazi-genetic-bottleneck">Persecution, Isolation, and the Ashkenazi Genetic Bottleneck</h2>



What contributed to those differences was the <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/detail-for-ashkenazi-ancestry">unique history of the Ashkenazi people</a>. During their long history in Europe, Ashkenazi Jews faced waves of persecution and cultural isolation that, in turn, impacted their genetics.&nbsp;



Starting in the 11th Century during the Christian Crusades, Jews living in primarily northwestern Europe were not just persecuted but, in some communities, massacred. Other communities in England and France, for instance, were expelled.&nbsp;



Fleeing from that violence and persecution, many Ashkenazi Jewish people migrated east to places like present-day Poland and Lithuania. The violence and the plague, which hit Europe in the 14th and 15th Centuries, decimated the Ashkenazi Jewish population.&nbsp;



Some estimate that it&nbsp;<a href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/detail-for-ashkenazi-ancestry" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">plummeted by close to 90 percent</a>. This created a population bottleneck so that most of the 10 million Ashkenazi Jewish people living today are related to a few hundred &#8220;founding individuals.&#8221;



To illustrate the impact of that isolation, two people of Ashkenazi descent in 14th-century Germany were&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867422013782?via%3Dihub" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">more genetically distinct than the average two Ashkenazi Jewish people living today</a>. 



While the persecution and isolation that created the population bottleneck happened in the Middle Ages, the persecution of Jewish people did not end then.&nbsp;



In the 20th Century, more than six million European Jewish people were systematically murdered in the Holocaust. Many who survived the Holocaust immigrated to the United States and Israel after the war.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-explore-your-ancestry-with-23andme">Explore Your Ancestry with 23andMe</h2>



Learn if your <a href="https://www.23andme.com/test-info/genetic-health/">genetics</a> might Increase your risk for any health conditions with 23andMe.



23andMe customers can go to their&nbsp;<a href="https://you.23andme.com/ancestry/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Ancestry Overview</a> and learn specific insights into whether they have&nbsp;<a href="https://you.23andme.com/reports/ancestry_composition_hd/ashkenazi/?ap2_smoother_compute_name=ap2_smoother_47_populations" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Ashkenazi ancestry</a>.&nbsp;



Are you still waiting to be a customer? Find out more about 23andMe&#8217;s ancestry offerings&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="https://www.23andme.com/dna-ancestry/" rel="noreferrer noopener">here</a>.



Knowing your ancestry can teach you about your family&#8217;s heritage and is vital for your health.&nbsp;



With our health + Ancestry service, you can learn more about your ancestry and genetic health. Find out more&nbsp;<a href="https://www.23andme.com/dna-health-ancestry/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">here</a>.

23andMe Blog

23andMe Blog Team

Understanding Ashkenazi Jewish Ancestry & Genetics for Your Health

23andMe has added finer detail for customers whose roots trace back to Indigenous American ancestors. There are 18 regions in Central America, from Guatemala in the north to Panama in the south.



The update is part of our continuing work to improve 23andMe’s Ancestry reports and features. Recently, 23andMe added new details for people with Indigenous Mexican Ancestry and previously updated reports on North American Indigenous ancestry and Indigenous Caribbean ancestry. This latest update allows customers with ancestry from one of these Central American indigenous Genetic Groups to see their connections genetically and geographically.



The updates help highlight the importance of Indigenous groups and culture within the region, where people of Indigenous ancestry often make up a sizable proportion of the total population. Among the countries in the region, Guatemala has the highest percentage of Indigenous people.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-indigenous-populations-of-central-america">Indigenous Populations of Central America</h2>



Central America is at a crossroads between Mesoamerican, Chibchan-speaking, and Andean cultural and linguistic spheres.



Long before colonization, Indigenous societies like the Maya in Guatemala, southern Mexico, northern Honduras, and the Nahua in Mexico and El Salvador built thriving and sophisticated communities dating back many centuries.  However, dozens of other Indigenous populations also thrived in different geographic areas of the region with their own distinct languages and cultures, such as the people of the Coclé culture in what is now Panama or the Lenca people in Honduras and El Salvador.



The ruins of Copán in Honduras offer a glimpse of the sophistication of the Mayan people dating back to pre-Columbian times.



While the region’s independence from Spain in 1821 allowed for more regional autonomy and ended the forced labor of Indigenous people, it did not improve their lives. New governments did not respect Indigenous communal land rights, which often left them in more extreme poverty. The lingering inequities from that history can be seen today within these nations, as detailed by the<a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/region/lac/brief/indigenous-latin-america-in-the-twenty-first-century-brief-report-page"> World Bank’s report on Indigenous Latin America</a>.  



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Ancestry Composition update</h2>



23andMe&#8217;s Ancestry Composition report is a living analysis that improves as we add new reference data. Underlying our Ancestry reports are powerful algorithms and analytical tools developed by 23andMe population geneticists and engineers to offer our customers more insights into their ancestral origins.



Over the last few years, we&#8217;ve updated results to allow our customers to see more detail about their connections to specific geographic regions that correspond to Indigenous populations.  



While 23andMe customers may already see evidence of recent ancestry within the nations of Central America, this update connects individuals to more specific Genetic Groups, potentially offering more details about their ancestral origins. The Genetic Groups that are part of this update are also more reflective of the distinct regional populations and customers&#8217; ancestry.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Regions in Central America covered in this update</h2>



23andMe’s new update for Indigenous Central American ancestry looks at 18 different areas within six nations.



The new Indigenous Central American Genetic Groups correspond to shared Indigenous American ancestry within these regions. For instance, the Northwestern Guatemalan Highlands includes people who speak Mayan languages, including Akateko, Jakalteko, Q’anjob’al, K’iche’ (Qatzijob al), and Q’eqchi’. In the south, the Coclé and West Central Panama region was part of the archaeological cultural area known as Gran Coclé, which is home to the Coclé culture.



Below are the lists of Genetic Groups 23andMe has added as part of this update.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Indigenous-Central-American-Ancestry-1024x665.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-31921" style="width:650px;height:422px"/></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">List of Genetic Groups</h2>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Central Guatemalan Highlands — This region is home to the Maya ruins of Iximche? — the former capital of the Kaqchikel Kingdom — and Mixco Viejo, the former capital of the Chajoma Kingdom.</li>



<li>Motagua River Valley and the Eastern Guatemalan Highlands — Guatemala’s Motagua River Valley is a source of green jade, a rare mineral used by Mesoamerican civilizations to create figurines, ornaments, masks, and other treasures for rituals or to reflect their owners’ high status.</li>



<li>Western Guatemalan Highlands — This region boasts the restored ruins of Zaculeu, the capital city of the ancient Mam Kingdom near the modern-day city of Huehuetenango. Eventually conquered by the neighboring K’iche’ kingdom of Q’umarkaj, Zaculeu was continuously occupied for over a millennium until its abandonment in the 16th century.</li>



<li>Northwestern Guatemalan Highlands — Many people in this Genetic Group speak Mayan languages of central and western Guatemala, including Akateko, Jakalteko, Q’anjob’al, K’iche’ (Qatzijob?al), and Q’eqchi’.</li>



<li>Ch’orti’ of Guatemala and Honduras — This region is home to the ruins of the capital city of the ancient Maya Kingdom of Copán, which flourished between the 5th and 9th centuries.</li>



<li>Goascorán River Basin and Comayagua Valley —This region was once the heartland of the Lenca people, though today most Lenca live in western Honduras. The ruins of two important commercial centers for the ancient Lenca Empire are also in this region: Quelepa in what is now eastern El Salvador and Yarumela in central Honduras.&nbsp;</li>



<li>Central Sierra Madres—This region was once home to the southernmost Maya sites including Tazumal, but much of the region later fell under the influence of Cuzcatlan, a powerful Nahua confederation that flourished between the 13th and 16th centuries.</li>



<li>Western Honduran Highlands — Once home to a number of Maya, Lenca, and Jicaque (Tolupan) settlements, this region was a crossroads between the Mesoamerican and Chibchan-speaking worlds.</li>



<li>Central Honduran Highlands — This region includes the Yarumela archaeological site — the ruins of an important commercial center for the ancient Lenca Empire near what is now the capital city of Honduras: Tegucigalpa.</li>



<li>Central American Volcanic Cordillera — El Salvador —This region was once part of Cuzcatlan (Kuskatan), a powerful Nahua confederation that flourished between the 13th and 16th centuries. Some people in this Genetic Group say their recent ancestors spoke Nawat (Nahuat).&nbsp;</li>



<li>Pacific Lowlands of Western Panama — Historically, this region was part of the territory of the Ngäbe people, which extended across much of western Panama. Today, most Ngäbe live in the semi-autonomous Ngäbe-Buglé Comarca, and many still speak Ngäbere, a Chibchan language.&nbsp;&nbsp;</li>



<li>Guna Yala and East Central Panama — Some people in this Genetic Group speak Guna (Kuna) — a Chibchan language spoken by the Guna people of Panama and Colombia. Today, most Guna people live on the San Blas islands off the coast of the semi-autonomous Guna Yala Comarca.</li>



<li>Coclé and West Central Panama —This region was part of the archaeological cultural area known as Gran Coclé, defined by the distinctive pottery and striking artifacts made by people of the Coclé culture, primarily between 500 – 1000 C.E.</li>



<li>Coclé and the Azuero Peninsula of Panama —This region was part of the archaeological cultural area known as Gran Coclé, defined by the distinctive pottery and striking artifacts made by people of the Coclé culture, primarily between 500 – 1000 C.E.</li>



<li>Central Valley of Costa Rica — While relatively few people in Costa Rica identify as Indigenous today, there are still a number of Indigenous Peoples in the country including the Cabécar, Bribri, and Teribe (Térraba), among others.</li>



<li>West Central Nicaragua — Northeast Cocibolca — Historically, parts of this region were home to the Matagalpa (Cacaopera) and Chorotega peoples.</li>



<li>Northern Nicaraguan Highlands and Los Maribios —This region was once home to the Matagalpa (Cacaopera) of the central highlands, the Chorotega of western Nicaragua, and the Xiu (Subtiaba) of the country’s northern Pacific coastal region. Some people in this Genetic Group identify as Matagalpa (Cacaopera), though others identify as Miskito.&nbsp;</li>



<li>West Nicaragua — Xolotlán and Cocibolca — Before Spanish colonization, this region was home to the Nicarao, a Nahuat-speaking people after whom the modern country of Nicaragua was named.</li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">More on the update</h2>



About 1 percent of our customers, who have tested on our <a href="https://customercare.23andme.com/hc/en-us/articles/218392668-Upgrading-to-23andMe-s-Newest-Chip-Version">latest genotyping chip</a>, will receive a match to one or more of the Genetic Groups listed. Some of the common clusters will connect customers to Northern Nicaraguan Highlands and Los Maribios, the Central Valley of Costa Rica, Coclé and West Central Panama, the Western Honduran Highlands, Central American Volcanic Cordillera in El Salvador, and the Western Guatemalan Highlands.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Find out more</h2>



23andMe customers see their <a href="https://you.23andme.com/reports/ancestry_composition_hd/">Ancestry Composition</a>.&nbsp;



Not yet a customer? Find out more about <a href="https://www.23andme.com/compare-dna-tests/">23andMe’s Ancestry Service and other services</a>.&nbsp;

A map illustrating the 18 indigenous genetic groups in Central America that are part of 23andMe's update.

Indigenous Central American Ancestry

Deanna didn&#8217;t know what to expect when she met her father, Gus, for the first time a year ago. She didn&#8217;t know how he would react. She didn&#8217;t know what it would be like for him either.&nbsp;



&#8220;I know it doesn&#8217;t turn out well for some adoptees when they first connect with their birth parents,&#8221; Deanna said. &#8220;But for Gus and me, it was like a fairytale… (it) was the greatest miracle of my life.&#8221;



<h6 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-happy-father-s-day">Happy Father&#8217;s Day</h6>



Deanna first met her birth dad a few weeks before Father&#8217;s Day in 2022. Gus was 91. He&#8217;d never married, had no children, and thought he was alone in the world. Deanna found him after connecting with a cousin using <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/dna-testing-for-adoptees" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">23andMe&#8217;s DNA Relatives</a> feature.&nbsp;



&#8220;There&#8217;d been no hope of finding him otherwise, outside DNA… and God,&#8221; she said.&nbsp;



Gus was in a nursing home in Virginia. The former ballroom dance instructor and competitive dancer had fallen at home. He&#8217;d been found on the floor by the authorities, after his doctor had requested a welfare check because she became concerned after not hearing from Gus. In the nursing home, bedridden and alone, Gus awaited the end. Then Deanna called him.



&#8220;One day he woke up thinking he was alone in the world, and by that afternoon, he had a daughter, a son-in-law, three grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren,&#8221; she said.



&#8220;I&#8217;m not alone in the world anymore,&#8221; he told her.



&#8220;No, you&#8217;re not. You&#8217;re not,&#8221; Deanna said.



<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/reunitedbiodad-1100x619-1-1024x576.webp" alt="An photo showing Deanna visiting Gus at a nursing home in Virginia and a photo of them holding hands." class="wp-image-31893" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/reunitedbiodad-1100x619-1-1024x576.webp 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/reunitedbiodad-1100x619-1-300x169.webp 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/reunitedbiodad-1100x619-1-768x432.webp 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/reunitedbiodad-1100x619-1-880x495.webp 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/reunitedbiodad-1100x619-1.webp 1100w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Gus and Deanna after she visited him in a nursing home in Virginia. </figcaption></figure>



<h6 class="wp-block-heading">My Daughter Loves Me</h6>



Not a crier, Gus was hit with a wave of emotion in their first phone call and started crying. Deanna had years to think about and prepare for the moment they would meet. It all came out of the blue for Gus, and it was a bit overwhelming.&nbsp;



It was the greatest early Father’s Day gift Deanna could have given him. Gus knew he didn&#8217;t have much time. So as they talked and she said she hoped to visit him, he asked her:&nbsp;



&#8220;How soon can you come?&#8221;



Only a short time after they talked on the phone, Deanna traveled from her Florida home and visited him in person in Virginia. She spent Father&#8217;s Day with him on their first and only Father&#8217;s Day together. She gave him a shirt that read, &#8220;My daughter loves me.&#8221;



But her time with him wasn&#8217;t confined to this one visit. She stayed for more than a week, getting to know him, letting him get to know her, and peppering him with questions about his life and family. She kept coming back. Sometimes they&#8217;d sit and listen to music together; his favorite was Frank Sinatra.&nbsp;



Deanna asked Gus if he wanted to live with her and her husband. He said yes right away and wanted to know how soon they could go. Deanna helped care for him in her home in the last months of his life. He got to know her and her family. He became part of it.



<h6 class="wp-block-heading">A Long Wait</h6>



They had seven months to get to know each other. Gus died at the end of last year.



&#8220;We tried to cram a lifetime into a few months,&#8221; she said.



Like many stories about adoptees connecting with biological families, Deanna&#8217;s has layers of complexity.&nbsp;



She was born in Virginia, adopted at two months of age, and raised by a couple in Maryland who couldn&#8217;t have children of their own. They adopted Deanna and her sister, who is not biologically related to Deanna. While they were good parents, Deanna had been searching for her biological parents ever since she stumbled upon birth records that showed her birth name, a name different from her own. She knows that not all adoptees are like this, but for Deanna, a part of her felt missing. Sometimes Deanna felt as if she came from a building instead of people. It wasn&#8217;t until her first child was born that she thought of the profound connection of an actual blood relative.



Over the years, in searching for her birth family for so long, she&#8217;d developed a network of friends who were also adoptees doing their own searches. From those friends, she understood that these journeys don&#8217;t always have a happy ending. Sometimes the birth family rejects them or refuses to connect. Sometimes the relationship sours.



Knowing that, Deanna is doubly thankful that she found Gus and that they were able to get to know each other.&nbsp;



&#8220;I had to wait for the longest, but best ending,&#8221; she said.



<h6 class="wp-block-heading">The Weight of Not Knowing</h6>



Through her network, Deanna shared her story on social media — something she leans on heavily for her work as <a href="https://www.drdeannashrodes.com/about/">a pastor in Florida</a>. She documented her first embrace with Gus and their joy in creating a relationship.&nbsp;



The story caught fire on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/deanna.shrodes/videos/406365054835548">Facebook</a> and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/18242431162082435/">Instagram</a> with the hashtag&nbsp;



<a href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/findingmrgreek?__eep__=6&amp;__cft__%5b0%5d=AZV6rMZuycHKWKaENeHc9lioIjA5nXZZ9g8zTL1Qh8ICcbKtP1RPLLiEdyNZ55v7HoQALF0p64H_FMycCi_5sQgZjq6vrLsHMryYytl3Wcx73A&amp;__tn__=*NK-R">#findingmrgreek</a>. That was because, for a long time, all she knew about her birth father was that he was Greek. Eventually, it was picked up by CBS This Morning&#8217;s David Begnaud and featured on the show late last year. This spring, the New Yorker&#8217;s Larissa MacFarquhar detailed Deanna&#8217;s experience as part of a wonderfully written story about the emotional legacy many adoptees carry from being cleaved from their birth families.



A quote from Deanna encapsulated the feeling: &#8220;In order to be adopted, you first have to lose your entire family,&#8221; she told MacFarquhar.



<h6 class="wp-block-heading">Turning to DNA</h6>



Not all adoptees feel the same, but that loss is profound for many and never goes away. It&#8217;s what sustained Deanna&#8217;s search for all these years. She found her birth mom almost 30 years ago. They built a wonderful relationship before she passed away about a decade ago, but the one thing that produced a strain was asking about her father. 



Her relationship with Gus so embittered her birth mom that she would never share his name with Deanna, telling her she&#8217;d take his name to her grave. That was in 2013, and when Deanna told her that she could use DNA to help find him, Deanna&#8217;s mother got angry.



Although that hurt Deanna, she understood the devastating impact of the pregnancy on her mom. She was 20 when Deanna was born, 16 years younger than Gus. It was a scandal within her family. Even after giving Deanna up for adoption, her life was not easy. The only detail she&#8217;d offered Deanna was that her birth dad had dark hair and was Greek.



So, Deanna tested with 23andMe in 2013, almost a decade before she got matched with a cousin that helped her find Gus.



<h6 class="wp-block-heading">A Genetic Mirror</h6>



Deanna said she lived without knowing her birth parents and where she came from, and making that connection helped relieve some of the emotional pain.



It didn&#8217;t erase her love for her parents or solve all her problems. She is very open about her struggles with depression. Yet she was seeing someone who looked like her and even had expressions like her own, and this grounded her in some way. It lifted a weight from her; it fascinated her as well. How could she be so like someone she&#8217;d never met?



It wasn&#8217;t just physical appearances, either. Some of the similarities between Deanna and Gus were uncanny.&nbsp;



&#8220;It was mind-blowing; I was so much more like him than my (birth) mother,&#8221; she said. &#8220;Even some of the unique phrases we used. When I get upset, I might say, &#8216;Let me enlighten you,’ or when the kids get into something at the house, I would say, &#8216;All right, call the cops!&#8217; He used those same phrases.&#8221;&nbsp;



They both liked to sit on their porch swing and even liked the same types of food, Deanna said.&nbsp;



Before she found Gus, she used to look at herself in the mirror after she found her birth mom. She could see some of her birth mom. But in her mind, she sort of &#8220;photoshopped out&#8221; the traits she thought came from her birth mom. What was leftover, she thought, must be from her birth dad. She tried to construct what he would have looked like in her mind. When they finally met, she saw herself and parts of him in her children.



&#8220;All of those that immediately clicked, why I look the way I do, and so many other things,&#8221; Deanna said. &#8220;It was like looking at a genetic mirror.&#8221;



<h6 class="wp-block-heading">Fathers and Families</h6>



Maybe if Deanna and her birth father had met earlier, she would have had time to probe about why he did what he did and why he hadn&#8217;t supported her birth mom. Then, maybe she could have been more critical.&nbsp;



&#8220;I didn&#8217;t have time to dwell on the negative,&#8221; Deanna said. “We only had so much time together and I wanted to maximize it.”



Her connecting with her birth mom three decades ago and then finding Gus changed some of the dynamics within her adopted family. But her relationship with her father didn&#8217;t change. She said she and her father are very different people. Still, he accepted and encouraged her to search for her birth family.&nbsp;



&#8220;Nothing changed between my father and me,&#8221; Deanna said.



Love is not a zero-sum game for Deanna. But, finding Gus and finding love for him didn&#8217;t negate her love for her father.



&#8220;My relationship with Gus is very, very different from my [relationship with my] adopted father who raised me,&#8221; Deanna said. &#8220;They&#8217;re so different. They are different as people and so different in how they relate to me. So I see them both as a father, but they give me very different things if that makes any sense.&#8221;



As Father&#8217;s Day approaches, Deanna has time to process all that has happened in the last year — finding Gus, meeting him for the first time, and helping to care for him until his death. But instead, she finds solace in what he gave her and what she could give him. A friend told Deanna what Gus said not long before his death.&nbsp;



&#8220;He did tell one of his friends that the last year of his life that we were together was the greatest experience of his life,&#8221; Deanna said.



<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/reunitedbiodad2-1100x619-1-1024x576.webp" alt="A photo Deana and Gus wearing t-Shirts that say &quot;Florida or Bust.&quot;" class="wp-image-31892" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/reunitedbiodad2-1100x619-1-1024x576.webp 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/reunitedbiodad2-1100x619-1-300x169.webp 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/reunitedbiodad2-1100x619-1-768x432.webp 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/reunitedbiodad2-1100x619-1-880x495.webp 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/reunitedbiodad2-1100x619-1.webp 1100w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Gus leaving the Virginia nursing home on his way to Florida where Deanna and her husband cared for him in their home.</figcaption></figure>

Gus leaving the Virginia nursing home on his way to Florida where Deanna and her husband cared for him in their home.

Father’s Day Special

23andMe has added finer detail for customers with roots that trace back to Indigenous American ancestors from 28 different regions in what is now Mexico.



The update is part of our continuing work to improve 23andMe’s Ancestry reports and features. This new update allows customers with Indigenous American ancestry from one of these  Genetic Groups in Mexico to see their connections genetically as well as geographically. It also helps to convey the breadth of  genetic and cultural diversity of Mexico, and the rich history of Mesoamerican civilizations there.



(Dig deeper into your ancestry with 23andMe&#8217;s <a href="https://www.23andme.com/dna-ancestry/">DNA Ancestry service</a>, or sign-up for a <a href="https://www.23andme.com/membership/">membership</a> to unlock more about your personal genetics and geneaology.)



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="536" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/linkedin_ancestry_update_IC-copy-1024x536.png" alt="A map that shows the indigenous Mexican regions." class="wp-image-31861" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/linkedin_ancestry_update_IC-copy-1024x536.png 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/linkedin_ancestry_update_IC-copy-300x157.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/linkedin_ancestry_update_IC-copy-768x402.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/linkedin_ancestry_update_IC-copy-880x461.png 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/linkedin_ancestry_update_IC-copy-1180x618.png 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/linkedin_ancestry_update_IC-copy.png 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



<h6 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-indigenous-populations-of-mexico">Indigenous populations of Mexico</h6>



Mexico, and Latin America generally, is <a href="https://en.unesco.org/creativity/activities/designing-policies-support-indigenous-community-radio-mexico">among the world’s most ethnically diverse regions</a>, according to UNESCO. The indigenous people within what is now Mexico have a deep history that predates European colonization by <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02190-y#:~:text=Archaeologists%20excavating%20a%20cave%20in,15%2C000%20years%20earlier%20than%20thought.">more than 15,000 thousand years</a>. Several major indigenous cultures flourished in this precolonial period including the Olmec, Maya, and Aztec civilizations.



These indigenous groups developed innovative farming techniques and built large urban centers. <a href="https://maya.nmai.si.edu/the-maya/creation-story-maya">The Maya</a> were skilled astronomers and mathematicians, and developed the unique<a href="https://maya.nmai.si.edu/calendar/calendar-system"> Mayan calendar</a>. They left behind sophisticated art and architecture and massive stone pyramids. The Aztec city of Tenochtitlan, built on an island in Lake Texcoco, was at the center of a <a href="https://learninglab.si.edu/collections/aztecs/gUF9FfFqXvfMoF4H#r/313707">vast Aztec empire</a>.



Another city, Teotihuacan founded 2,000 years ago, was the sixth largest urban center in the world at its zenith around the second century AD with a population of more than 120,000. The massive stone pyramids of Teotihuacan can still be seen today. Each of these cultures had their own unique art, music, and belief systems. They each had intricate trade and social hierarchies that buttressed their societies.



Spanish explorers first set foot in Mexico in 1519, and Hernan Cortes conquered the Aztecs by 1521 beginning what became 300 years of Spanish rule.



<h6 class="wp-block-heading">Ancestry Composition update</h6>



23andMe&#8217;s Ancestry Composition report is a living analysis that improves as we add new reference data. Underlying our Ancestry reports are powerful algorithms and analytical tools developed by 23andMe population geneticists and engineers to offer our customers more insights into their ancestral origins.



Over the last few years, we&#8217;ve updated results for people with <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry-reports/african-ethnolinguistic-groups/">African Ancestry</a>, <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry-reports/ancestry-composition-update-china/">Chinese ancestry,</a> <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/23andme-adds-more-detail-for-indigenous-caribbean-ancestry">Indigenous Caribbean Ancestry,</a> <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/23andme-adds-more-detail-for-spanish-and-portuguese-ancestry">Spanish and Portuguese Ancestry,</a> <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry-reports/indigenous-genetic-ancestry/">Indigenous American ancestry</a>, and <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/23andme-adds-more-detail-for-customers-with-british-and-irish-ancestry">British and Irish Ancestry</a>, for instance.



While 23andMe customers may already see evidence of recent ancestry within Mexico, this update and these Genetic Groups represent improvements in specificity. The Genetic Groups that are part of this update are also more reflective of the distinct regional populations and customers&#8217; ancestry.



<h6 class="wp-block-heading">Regions in Mexico covered in this update</h6>



Today, Mexico recognizes 68 different ethnic groups clustered into <a href="https://www.inali.gob.mx/clin-inali/">11 linguistic families</a>, these in turn can be divided into Northern and Southern regions of Mexico.



23andMe’s new Indigenous Mexico Genetic Groups looks at 28 groups that are also divided between Northern Mexico and Southern Mexico. Many of these Genetic Groups correspond to shared Indigenous American ancestry from parts of Mexico associated with important Indigenous agricultural innovations or specific Indigenous groups. For instance, in the Southern area, some of the Genetic Groups identified are in the Balsas River Basin, which covers an area believed to be where, 9,000 years ago, <a href="https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/releases/new-research-reveals-earliest-evidence-corn-new-world">maize (corn) was first domesticated</a>. Many of the other Genetic Groups correspond with regions once part of the Maya civilization, where Mayan languages are still spoken today. Within the Oaxaca Valley, Zapotec languages predominate, while Mixtec is common in western Oaxaca and southeastern Guerrero.



Below are the lists of Genetic Groups 23andMe has added.



<h6 class="wp-block-heading">The Northern Indigenous Mexican Genetic Groups are divided into nine regions:</h6>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Northern Mexican Plateau</li>



<li>Mexican Volcanic Cordillera—East Central</li>



<li>Mexican Volcanic Cordillera—West</li>



<li>Plains of Northeastern Mexico</li>



<li>Sonoran Desert and Baja California</li>



<li>West Central Mexico</li>



<li>East Central Mexico</li>



<li>Upper Santiago River Basin</li>



<li>Mexican Volcanic Cordillera—West Central</li>
</ul>



<h6 class="wp-block-heading">The Southern Indigenous Mexican Genetic Groups are divided into 19 regions:</h6>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Yucatán Peninsula</li>



<li>Balsas River Basin—Central Guerrero</li>



<li>Valley of Oaxaca—Ejutla</li>



<li>Valley of Oaxaca—Tlacolula</li>



<li>Sierra Norte of Oaxaca</li>



<li>Chiapas Highlands</li>



<li>Isthmus of Tehuantepec—Oaxaca</li>



<li>Sierra Madre del Sur—Coast</li>



<li>Balsas River Basin—Huitzuco</li>



<li>Mexican Volcanic Cordillera—South Central</li>



<li>Balsas River Basin—North Guerrero</li>



<li>Mexican Volcanic Cordillera—Citlaltépetl and Tehuacán</li>



<li>Balsas River Basin—Tierra Caliente</li>



<li>Mexican Volcanic Cordillera—West Puebla</li>



<li>Balsas River Basin—Southwest Puebla</li>



<li>La Mixteca</li>



<li>Mexican Volcanic Cordillera—Veracruz</li>



<li>Balsas River Basin—West Guerrero</li>



<li>La Mixteca—North</li>
</ul>



More than half a million 23andMe customers, who have tested on our <a href="https://customercare.23andme.com/hc/en-us/articles/218392668-Upgrading-to-23andMe-s-Newest-Chip-Version">latest genotyping chip</a>, will receive a match to one or more of the Genetic Groups listed.



Among customers with four grandparents from Mexico, around 60 percent will receive a match to a Genetic Group in northern Mexico, while 30 percent will receive a match to a Genetic Group in southern Mexico.



The most common clusters in the North include the Mexican Volcanic Cordillera—West, the Upper Santiago River Basin, and the Sonoran Desert and Baja California regions. In the south the Yucatan Peninsula, Chiapas Highlands and the Balsas River Basin—West Guerrero were among the top clusters.



<h6 class="wp-block-heading">Find out more</h6>



23andMe customers see their <a href="https://you.23andme.com/reports/ancestry_composition_hd/">Ancestry Composition</a>.&nbsp;



Not yet a customer? Find out more about <a href="https://www.23andme.com/compare-dna-tests/">23andMe’s Ancestry Service and other services</a>.&nbsp;

A map that shows the indigenous Mexican regions.

23andMe Adds More Detail for Indigenous Mexican Ancestry

23andMe has added finer detail for customers with roots that trace back to four Indigenous Caribbean populations, which include Indigenous ancestry in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and the Southern Caribbean.&nbsp;



The update is part of our continuing work to improve 23andMe&#8217;s ancestry reports and features. This new update allows customers with ancestry from these regions to see connections back to populations indigenous to Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and other parts of the Caribbean and surrounding mainlands. 



About two percent of 23andMe&#8217;s customers who have tested on our <a href="https://customercare.23andme.com/hc/en-us/articles/218392668-Upgrading-to-23andMe-s-Newest-Chip-Version">latest genotyping chip</a> will receive a match to one or more of the groups.&nbsp;



<h6 class="wp-block-heading">Indigenous Populations in the Caribbean</h6>



It&#8217;s believed that humans first settled these islands more than <a href="https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/ancient-dna-retells-story-of-caribbeans-first-people/">6,000 years ago</a>. It&#8217;s also where Indigenous Americans first encountered European explorers and colonizers after 1490 to devastating effect.&nbsp;



The region&#8217;s indigenous populations collapsed within decades after Spanish expeditions first encountered the native Arawak people living in the Bahamas, Cuba, and Hispaniola. The dramatic decimation of these populations was due to disease, enslavement, and outright killing by these early colonizers.



But recent studies of <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-03053-2">ancient DNA</a> show that traces of the early pre-colonial populations can still be found in people with roots in this region. People from these regions often have mixed ancestry, including contributions from their African, European, and Indigenous ancestors.&nbsp;



<h6 class="wp-block-heading">Ancestry Composition update</h6>



23andMe&#8217;s Ancestry Composition report is a living analysis that improves as we add new reference data. Underlying our ancestry reports are powerful algorithms and analytical tools developed by 23andMe population geneticists and engineers to offer our customers more insights into their ancestral origins.



Over the last few years, we&#8217;ve updated results for people with <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry-reports/african-ethnolinguistic-groups/">African Ancestry</a>, <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry-reports/ancestry-composition-update-china/">Chinese ancestry,</a> <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry-reports/indigenous-genetic-ancestry/">Indigenous American ancestry</a>, <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/23andme-adds-more-detail-for-customers-with-british-and-irish-ancestry">British and Irish ancestry</a>, as well as <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry-reports/caribbean-latin-american/">Latinx ancestry</a>, for instance. Customers may already see evidence of recent ancestry from the Iberian Peninsula. Still, this update and these genetic groups represent improvements in accuracy. They also reflect the distinct regional populations and customers&#8217; ancestry.



<h6 class="wp-block-heading">Regions in the Caribbean covered in this update</h6>



Around 80 percent of customers with four grandparents from Puerto Rico, Cuba, or the Dominican Republic will receive a match (and if those customers have more than five percent Indigenous American ancestry, around 95% will receive a match).&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Caribbean-Region-RAC-1024x683.png" alt="A map of the Caribbean showing Cuba, Dominican Republic and the Southern Caribbean region." class="wp-image-31533" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Caribbean-Region-RAC-1024x683.png 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Caribbean-Region-RAC-300x200.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Caribbean-Region-RAC-768x512.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Caribbean-Region-RAC-880x587.png 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Caribbean-Region-RAC-1180x787.png 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Caribbean-Region-RAC.png 1374w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



Many of these genetic groups likely reflect genetic ancestry related to the Taíno people who were Indigenous to the Greater Antilles, from Cuba in the West to Puerto Rico and the northernmost Leeward Islands of the Lesser Antilles in the East.&nbsp;



For the Southern Caribbean Genetic Group, there is also evidence of genetic ancestry related to the Garifuna people of the Windward islands of the Lesser Antilles. The Garifuna (Garínagu) people are descended from the Indigenous Kalinago inhabitants of Saint Vincent and the formerly enslaved West African people in the Lesser Antilles. Most Garifuna now live in eastern Central America, following the forced transportation of the Garifuna to the Bay of Honduras in the late 18th century.



<h6 class="wp-block-heading">More on Populations from these Regions</h6>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Dominican Republic: Ayiti, the Taíno name for Hispaniola, was the cultural heartland of the Taíno civilization, which extended from Cuba in the west to the Lesser Antilles in the east and reached its zenith just before European contact.</li>



<li>Puerto Rico: In the late 1400s, after Spanish colonizers reached Borikén (the Taíno name for Puerto Rico), the island&#8217;s Indigenous Taíno population was decimated. Most Puerto Ricans have between 5–15 percent Indigenous American ancestry. Today, more and more Puerto Ricans celebrate their Indigenous heritage, including through efforts to reconstruct the extinct Taíno language.</li>



<li>Cuba: Humans have lived in Cuba for over six thousand years, but the Indigenous Taíno People were the predominant culture during European contact.&nbsp;</li>



<li>Southern Caribbean: Many people in this genetic group speak Caribbean Creoles or Indigenous languages in the Cariban or Ta-Arawakan families, such as Garifuna. The Garifuna (Garínagu) people descended from the Indigenous Kalinago inhabitants of Saint Vincent and the formerly enslaved West African people in the Lesser Antilles. Most Garifuna now live in eastern Central America, following the forced transportation of the Garifuna to the Bay of Honduras in the late 18th century.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>



<h6 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-find-out-more">Find out more</h6>



23andMe customers who want to learn more about their Ancestry Composition can go <a href="https://you.23andme.com/reports/ancestry_composition_hd/">here</a>.&nbsp;



Not yet a customer? Find out more about 23andMe&#8217;s Ancestry Service and other services offered to customers <a href="https://www.23andme.com/compare-dna-tests/">here</a>.

A map showing the four new genetic groups added for people with Indigenous Caribbean ancestry

23andMe Adds More Detail for Indigenous Caribbean Ancestry

A name, a letter, and a necklace, that&#8217;s all Julia had of her birth mother for 22 years.



&#8220;Those always have been my only connection to my roots,&#8221; Julia said.



A social worker told her that her birth mother had returned to El Salvador, and Julia didn&#8217;t ever have much hope of learning more.



<h6 class="wp-block-heading">A Turning Point</h6>



That all changed late last year after Julia used 23andMe, first connecting with an older brother she didn&#8217;t know. Although she knew that her birth mother had two other children, a boy and a girl, Julia was initially skeptical that he was indeed her brother. They exchanged some messages. Julia learned the person who matched as a potential half-brother was also from a town just 20 minutes from her own, so it didn&#8217;t quite mesh with what she thought she knew about her birth family.



&#8220;Then he said, &#8216;do you still have the necklace that our mother gave you?'&#8221;



It was something no one else would have known about; it immediately stirred something deep in Julia. She began to cry.



It all happened very quickly after that. Julia met her birth mother and four other siblings through her newfound older brother, Melvin.



&#8220;That&#8217;s a huge turning point as an adopted kid,&#8221; said Julia, something she&#8217;d hoped for but never expected would happen.



<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="1024" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Julia-Talking-to-Adoption-agency-1024x1024.png" alt="" class="wp-image-31416" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Julia-Talking-to-Adoption-agency-1024x1024.png 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Julia-Talking-to-Adoption-agency-150x150.png 150w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Julia-Talking-to-Adoption-agency-300x300.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Julia-Talking-to-Adoption-agency-768x768.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Julia-Talking-to-Adoption-agency-880x880.png 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Julia-Talking-to-Adoption-agency-1180x1180.png 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Julia-Talking-to-Adoption-agency-271x271.png 271w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Julia-Talking-to-Adoption-agency-372x372.png 372w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Julia-Talking-to-Adoption-agency-574x574.png 574w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Julia-Talking-to-Adoption-agency-980x980.png 980w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Julia-Talking-to-Adoption-agency.png 1302w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Julia leaving a message with a social worker asking about her adoption.</figcaption></figure>



<h6 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-forgive-me">Forgive Me</h6>



It might have never taken place if Julia hadn&#8217;t used 23andMe, which had only happened because of a class project she was working on at college and the help of her instructor.



For years her connection to her birth family, and roots, was the necklace and the letter and the little things she knew about her birth mother, her name, Elsy. She even had an old photo of her birth mom, sitting with Julia&#8217;s parents.



The letter is folded carefully in an envelope Julia keeps in a little box laminated with a 10-colon Salvadorian banknote. In neatly worded Spanish, Julia&#8217;s birth mom, just 20 at the time, tried to explain why she&#8217;d given up her daughter. She didn&#8217;t know what else to do.



&#8220;My child, first off, I want to tell you that I love you. I love you so much,&#8221; the letter says. &#8220;I looked for other ways but could not find any. My love, I am a poor woman without luck. It&#8217;s always gone bad for me. I wish that you can forgive me one day, I may not be able to forgive myself.&#8221;



<h6 class="wp-block-heading">Family is Family</h6>



Mastering Spanish and learning about El Salvador had been a way for Julia to connect to her birth family and her roots. It was something that her parents encouraged.



Julia always knew she&#8217;d been adopted because her parents never hid that from her. Her parents, Matt and Kristen, couldn&#8217;t have children &#8220;the natural way,&#8221; as Kristen says. So, they decided to adopt. Julia&#8217;s sister, Audrey, was also adopted. So, there was never a time that Julia or her sister didn&#8217;t know.



But being adopted didn&#8217;t change how Julia felt about her sister or her parents.



&#8220;My family is just my family,&#8221; Julia says.



It&#8217;s not just her parents and her sister, Julia is bonded with the sprawling collection of her cousins, grandparents, aunts and uncles. Of course, this is her family, but she was always curious about where she came from.



Julia was just nine days old when she was adopted. And Matt and Kristen had made a point of meeting Julia&#8217;s birth mom. They even have a photo of them together on Julia&#8217;s adoption day. The idea was that they would maintain that connection. They&#8217;d hoped that Elsy would be able to remain in Julia&#8217;s life, but it didn&#8217;t work out that way. After the adoption agency closed, they were told that Elsy had returned to El Salvador. They lost that connection.



In its place, Matt and Kristen ensured that Julia understood her Salvadorian roots, and encouraged her to learn more about the culture and the language.



&#8220;She embraced the culture a lot more and was in tune with it… as she got older, it became important to her to find her birth family,&#8221; her dad said.



But Julia was always curious to find out more.



<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="850" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Julia-Waiting-to-Open-Results-1024x850.png" alt="" class="wp-image-31415" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Julia-Waiting-to-Open-Results-1024x850.png 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Julia-Waiting-to-Open-Results-300x249.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Julia-Waiting-to-Open-Results-768x637.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Julia-Waiting-to-Open-Results-880x730.png 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Julia-Waiting-to-Open-Results-1180x979.png 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Julia-Waiting-to-Open-Results.png 1682w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Julia getting ready to open her 23andMe results.</figcaption></figure>



<h6 class="wp-block-heading">Barely Contained Excitement</h6>



Julia had twice tried to learn more.



First when she was 16 and then again at 18.



Both times she&#8217;d learned little of anything new. Finally, at 18 she&#8217;d reached out to the social worker and was given some minor details about her mother and her mother&#8217;s circumstances at the time of the adoption. There was nothing more than that.



Julia sought connection through understanding more about El Salvador. But she was equally taken with other cultures. She&#8217;s part of a Bollywood dance team and connects with India. Being a Latina in a predominantly white suburb, she looked for and found connections and community in many different ways, whether it was dance, music, or friend groups.



As part of one of her classes at Suffolk University, taught by the Emmy-award-winning documentary filmmaker<a href="https://www.jeremyslevine.com/about"> Jeremy Levine</a>, Julia decided to create a video project around her adoption journey. Professor Levine suggested Julia do a DNA test as part of the project. So she did, but she thought what she&#8217;d learn would be more about her ethnicity.



It all happened very quickly after she sent off her test in November. A day after Thanksgiving, Julia got an email that her reports were in. Again, she thought the reports would tell her the mix of her ancestry. Instead, she was stunned by what she learned.



&#8220;I thought I knew what it was going to be, but it was for the project, so I videoed myself opening the (reports),&#8221; she said.



In the video, she says she hadn’t expected to get her reports so quickly.



&#8220;This wasn&#8217;t supposed to happen for another two weeks so I&#8217;m not prepared at all. I set the camera up as fast as I could,&#8221; she said.



She rattles off the percentages of her Ancestry Composition, &#8220;42 percent Southern European, 35 percent Indigenous, 16 percent Sub-Saharan African.&#8221;



And then she notes with interest her increased likelihood of developing type 2 diabetes.



Then with a sort of &#8220;ah ha&#8221; expression, she says, &#8220;increased likelihood to weigh less than average.&#8221; And with that, she encircles her skinny wrist and shows it to the camera.



&#8220;Likely blue or green eyes,&#8221; she says. &#8220;And I have green eyes.&#8221;



&#8220;Ooh oo wait,&#8221; she says, shaking her head with emotion. She gasps and puts her hands on her face taking in a breath.



&#8220;I have… Oh my God, I&#8217;m shaking,&#8221; she starts crying.



<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="873" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Julia-Reaction-1024x873.png" alt="" class="wp-image-31414" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Julia-Reaction-1024x873.png 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Julia-Reaction-300x256.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Julia-Reaction-768x654.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Julia-Reaction-880x750.png 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Julia-Reaction-1180x1005.png 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Julia-Reaction.png 1244w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Julia after learning she&#8217;d found her biological brother.</figcaption></figure>



<h6 class="wp-block-heading">the world is so small </h6>



It all was so unexpected. It was, as Julia said, &#8220;getting deeper than I thought it would.&#8221;



Not only did she have an older half-brother, Melvin, but he was in Massachusetts, and he lived in a small town only about 30 minutes away.



She&#8217;d contacted him within an hour of finding the match, and they exchanged messages.



How close they&#8217;d been to each other all this time. Julia said her life has always felt like it was filled with coincidences and synchronicity. For example, until a year ago, she&#8217;d never worn the necklace her birth mother had given her out of fear that she might lose it, but then all of a sudden had the urge to wear it all the time.



Her first communication from her brother, Melvin, was through 23andMe: &#8220;Hi! I can&#8217;t believe this has happened. I think I know who you are. Yes, I&#8217;d love to get to know you too. This world is so small.&#8221;



Julia marveled at how close he and her birth mother had been all this time, they live in small towns in Massachusetts that are about 30 minutes from each other. He worked at the same hospital as Julia&#8217;s adopted mom, and one of her half-sisters, Nansy, also works there. Her birth mom works at a sandwich shop that Julia and her family have been to many times. Her older half-brother went to the school that Julia’s father once taught at although he attended class there a year or two after her dad went to teach somewhere else.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-embed aligncenter is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Julia&#039;s DNA Story" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2Haawaw9pr4?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</div><figcaption class="wp-element-caption"><code>To see Julias full video project go here: https://youtu.be/rWG1lCbwM68</code></figcaption></figure>



<h6 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-life-altering">LIFE ALTERING</h6>



She wonders how many times they have crossed paths.



&#8220;Maybe it happened all the time, and we never even realized it,&#8221; she said.



Soon thereafter, they made plans to meet at a mall.



&#8220;I&#8217;m about to meet my brother who grew up with my birth mother and five other siblings,&#8221; Julia said in the video she made as she prepared to meet her brother for the first time.



And after meeting him, Julia met her birth mom along two of her five other half siblings. Along with her older brother Melvin and older sister Nansy, are sister Dariana, and two younger brothers Jacob and Levi. At their first meeting Julia and Elsy hugged and cried and looked deep into each other&#8217;s faces. Julia, her newfound siblings, and her birth mom, are now trying to build a relationship. Her adoptive parents are equally emotional about the fact that Julia has made this connection. They cried at the news when she told them that she&#8217;d found her birth mom.



&#8220;Now it&#8217;s like I have closure about how I came into this world and who I am as a person… not just my own family, but my own identity as well,&#8221; Julia said, trying to put into words the complicated feelings she has. &#8220;Overall, most insane and incredible life-altering thing in the world.&#8221;

A photo of Julia as a smiling young girl.

A Name and a Necklace

As part of a series of ancestry updates, 23andMe has added finer detail for customers with British &amp; Irish ancestry.



More than half of our customers on the <a href="https://customercare.23andme.com/hc/en-us/articles/218392668-Upgrading-to-23andMe-s-Newest-Chip-Version">latest genotyping chip</a>, v5, will likely match one or more of the 38 Genetic Groups we added for customers with ancestry in Ireland and Great Britain (often referred to, together, as the British Isles). These include one Genetic Group in Wales, 17 in England, eight in Scotland, and 12 in Ireland.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="922" height="682" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/VA-British-Irish.png" alt="" class="wp-image-31126" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/VA-British-Irish.png 922w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/VA-British-Irish-300x222.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/VA-British-Irish-768x568.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/VA-British-Irish-880x651.png 880w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 922px) 100vw, 922px" /></figure>



<h6 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-ireland-and-great-britain">Ireland and Great Britain</h6>



The history and genetic landscape of the British Isles — which include Great Britain, Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Hebrides, and the Northern Isles — were largely shaped by waves of Celtic, then Anglo-Saxon, and Viking migrations from northwestern Europe. More recently, the people of the Isles have left their genetic fingerprints around the world, following centuries of nautical exploration, colonization, and immigration.



And although the Republic of Ireland is now independent of the United Kingdom—and Scotland and Wales have distinct cultural identities of their own—the people of the British Isles share this common genetic history and cross-cultural mixing.



<h6 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-ancestry-composition-update">Ancestry Composition Update</h6>



This update helps people with roots in this region discern more detail in their connections. The update also reflects that 23andMe&#8217;s Ancestry Composition report is a living analysis. Therefore, it improves over time as we add new reference data.&nbsp;



Underlying our Ancestry reports are powerful algorithms and analytical tools developed by 23andMe population geneticists and engineers to offer our customers more insights into their ancestral origins. Using these tools allows 23andMe to create and continuously improve our customers&#8217; results. Some recent updates include adding finer detail for customers with <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry-reports/african-ethnolinguistic-groups/">African ancestry</a>, <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry-reports/ancestry-composition-update-china/">Chinese ancestry,</a> <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry-reports/indigenous-genetic-ancestry/">Indigenous American ancestry</a>, <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry-reports/caribbean-latin-american/">Latine ancestry</a>, <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/detail-for-ashkenazi-ancestry">Ashkenazi ancestry</a>, and <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/articles/23andme-adds-more-detail-for-spanish-and-portuguese-ancestry">Spanish &amp; Portuguese ancestry</a>.&nbsp;



For many customers with ancestry from the British Isles, this new update will improve the specificity of their results and connect them to Genetic Groups within the region. However, not all v5 customers with British and Irish ancestry will receive new Genetic Group matches with this update. We identify these Genetic Groups by using identity-by-descent, which relies on heavy-duty computing to find clusters of individuals with shared segments of DNA. Those clusters also align with specific geographic regions.&nbsp;



While these Genetic Groups may sometimes overlap and do not necessarily reflect political boundaries, they often are more reflective of the distinct regional populations that connect to a customer&#8217;s ancestry.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="807" height="1024" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/British-Isles-807x1024.png" alt="" class="wp-image-31123" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/British-Isles-807x1024.png 807w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/British-Isles-236x300.png 236w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/British-Isles-768x975.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/British-Isles-693x880.png 693w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/British-Isles.png 846w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 807px) 100vw, 807px" /></figure>



<h6 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-regions-in-the-british-isles">Regions in the British Isles</h6>



In this update, the new methodology and algorithms use data from groups with four grandparents from specific parts of Ireland and Great Britain. Using these regional populations as reference data, we can connect customers with ancestry to those regional genetic groups through their shared DNA.&nbsp;



While people from Ireland, Britain, or Scotland tend to be genetically similar, genetic clusters show that even within countries, there are distinct regional differences, and this update captures some of that.



The most common Genetic Groups in the British Isles include Scots Irish, South England, Northeast England, Southwest England, East Anglia, Scottish Lowlands, and Wales.&nbsp;



The Scottish Highlands, the Northern Isles, Southwest Munster, and Galway are the least common.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="432" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/britishirish_edu1_2x-1024x432.png" alt="" class="wp-image-31136" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/britishirish_edu1_2x-1024x432.png 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/britishirish_edu1_2x-300x127.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/britishirish_edu1_2x-768x324.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/britishirish_edu1_2x-880x371.png 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/britishirish_edu1_2x-1180x498.png 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/britishirish_edu1_2x.png 1660w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



<h6 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-more-on-matching">More on Matching</h6>



Matching to one of these Genetic Groups means that you share a high genetic similarity with reference individuals in that group. While some regions overlap, we&#8217;ve distinguished each geographically and descriptively.&nbsp;



While customers may receive a likely or highly likely match to one of these Genetic Groups, this update does not provide more breakdowns for customers&#8217; British &amp; Irish ancestry percentages.&nbsp;



<h6 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-your-ancestry-matters-for-your-health">Your ancestry matters for your health</h6>



Many people find value in learning about their cultural roots. But knowing your ancestry can help you better understand your health. Your health and likelihood of developing certain conditions involve your environment, family history, and lifestyle. But your genetics also plays an important role, and some genetic risks are more common among people with specific ancestry.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="432" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/britishirish_edu6_2x-1024x432.png" alt="" class="wp-image-31134" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/britishirish_edu6_2x-1024x432.png 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/britishirish_edu6_2x-300x127.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/britishirish_edu6_2x-768x324.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/britishirish_edu6_2x-880x371.png 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/britishirish_edu6_2x-1180x498.png 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/britishirish_edu6_2x.png 1660w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



So, for example, people with ancestry from the British Isles are more likely to carry a variant in the HFE gene associated with <a href="https://www.23andme.com/topics/health-predispositions/hereditary-hemochromatosis/">hereditary hemochromatosis.</a> Hereditary hemochromatosis, known as the &#8220;Celtic Curse,&#8221; is a condition characterized by an over-absorption of iron which in turn can cause damage to the joints and specific organs.&nbsp;



<h6 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-find-out-more">Find out more</h6>



If you are a 23andMe customer with the <a href="https://customercare.23andme.com/hc/en-us/articles/218392668-Upgrading-to-23andMe-s-Newest-Chip-Version">latest genotyping chip</a>, V5, you can see your results in your Ancestry Composition report.



Not yet a customer? Find out more about <a href="https://www.23andme.com/compare-dna-tests/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">23andMe&#8217;s ancestry service and other services offered to customers here</a>.

More Detail for British and Irish Ancestry

23andMe has added finer detail for customers with roots that trace back to Spain and Portugal.



This update is part of our continuing work to improve our Ancestry reports and features. It will also allow customers with ancestry from those regions to see connections back to 43 genetic groups. These groups include 29 in Spain (including the Canary and Balearic archipelagos). In addition there are another 14 in Portugal (including the Azores and Madeira archipelagos). The update will affect about 10 percent of our customers who tested on our <a href="https://customercare.23andme.com/hc/en-us/articles/218392668-Upgrading-to-23andMe-s-Newest-Chip-Version">latest genotyping chip</a>. 



Spain and Portugal&#8217;s long colonial history means that many individuals with roots in the Americas may also see how those trace back to the Iberian Peninsula. Spain and Portugal have distinct and rich cultures and histories, but their histories also intertwine. Part of that history includes centuries of exploration, colonization, and trade, including the slave trade.&nbsp;



Iberian Peninsula



Bordering the Atlantic and at the mouth of the Mediterranean, the history of the people of the Iberian Peninsula is marked by their ocean-going explorations and influences from North Africa. The Moors ruled the peninsula for almost 800 years, and this influence can still be seen in both Spain and Portugal. But even older influences from the Greeks, Phoenicians, and Romans, are apparent. Each of these cultures have left a distinct imprint on the culture and history of the Iberian peninsula.&nbsp;



Ancestry Composition Update



23andMe&#8217;s Ancestry Composition report is a living analysis that improves as we add new reference data. Underlying our Ancestry reports are powerful algorithms and analytical tools developed by 23andMe population geneticists and engineers to offer our customers more insights into their ancestral origins.



Over the last few years, we&#8217;ve updated results for people with <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry-reports/african-ethnolinguistic-groups/">African Ancestry</a>, <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry-reports/ancestry-composition-update-china/">Chinese ancestry,</a> <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry-reports/indigenous-genetic-ancestry/">Indigenous American ancestry</a>, and <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry-reports/caribbean-latin-american/">Latinx ancestry</a>, for instance. Customers may already see evidence of recent ancestry from the Iberian Peninsula. However, this update and these genetic groups represent improvements in accuracy. They are also more reflective of the distinct regional populations and customers&#8217; ancestry.



Regions in Spain and Portugal



In this update, the new methodology and algorithms use data from groups of people of Spanish or Portuguese ancestry with grandparents from specific regions in the Iberian Peninsula, and some of these regions overlap. Using this method we can connect customers with Portuguese or Spanish ancestry to those regional genetic groups through their shared DNA.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="926" height="422" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Spanish-Portuguese-percents.png" alt="" class="wp-image-31125" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Spanish-Portuguese-percents.png 926w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Spanish-Portuguese-percents-300x137.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Spanish-Portuguese-percents-768x350.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Spanish-Portuguese-percents-880x401.png 880w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 926px) 100vw, 926px" /></figure>



For 23andMe customers with Portuguese ancestry, the update most commonly includes matches to the regions of Porto, Minho, and Via Real, as well as Central and Southern Portugal and Madeira. The least common regions for matching are Terceira, Santa Maria and Flores, Corvo, and Graciosa in the Azores.



For customers with Spanish ancestry the most common matches will be to Western Andalusia (near Huelva, Seville, and Badajoz). Also customers with Spanish ancestry will more commonly see Southern Andalusia (near Cadiz), as well as to the Canary Islands matches. The least common regions are Galician and Basque associated regions in northern Spain. 



<h6 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-more-on-matching">More on Matching</h6>



Among customers on the <a href="https://customercare.23andme.com/hc/en-us/articles/218392668-Upgrading-to-23andMe-s-Newest-Chip-Version">latest genotyping chip</a>, V5, who have more than 95 percent of their ancestry from the Iberian peninsula, around 40 percent will match with at least one Portuguese genetic group. Similarly, for customers on the latest chip with over 75 percent of their ancestry from the Iberian peninsula, approximately 40 percent will be matched to at least one Spanish genetic group.



Matching to one of these genetic groups means that you share a high genetic similarity with people in that group. Some regions overlap. But we&#8217;ve distinguished each geographically and descriptively. The names of these genetic groups also attempt to indicate the geographic regions.



Customers may receive a likely or highly likely match to one of these genetic groups. However, this update does not provide more breakdowns for customers&#8217; Spanish and Portuguese ancestry percentages. 



Your ancestry matters for your health



Many people find value in learning about their cultural roots but understanding your ancestry can also help you better understand your health. Your health and your likelihood of developing certain conditions involves several factors. These factors include your environment, family history and lifestyle. However, your genetics also plays an important role.



In some cases, that can be specific to the unique history of our ancestral groups.&nbsp;



So, for example, V30M, a genetic variant associated with<a href="https://www.23andme.com/topics/health-predispositions/hereditary-amyloidosis/"> TTR-related hereditary amyloidosis</a> is more common among people of <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12832749/#:~:text=Portuguese%2Dtype%20amyloidosis%20(transthyretin%20amyloidosis%2C%20ATTR%20V30M)%20is,inherited%20in%20autosomal%20dominant%20mode.">Portuguese ancestry</a>. It&#8217;s also common in people of Northern Swedish and Japanese ancestry. The condition causes a buildup of a protein called transthyretin (TTR) in the body&#8217;s tissues and organs. That build up can damage the nerves, the heart, or other organs in the body. 



People of Iberian descent have a higher likelihood of having one of the genetic variants linked to <a href="https://www.23andme.com/topics/health-predispositions/alpha-1-antitrypsin-deficiency/">alpha 1 antitrypsin deficiency</a>. Alpha 1 antitrypsin deficiency is a genetic condition that can lead to lung and liver disease



Find out more



23andMe customers who want to learn more about their Ancestry Composition can go <a href="https://you.23andme.com/reports/ancestry_composition_hd/">here</a>. 



Not yet a customer? 



Find out more about 23andMe’s Ancestry service and other services offered to customers here.

A map of Spain and Portugal noting the 43 new genetic groups in Iberia.

23andMe Adds More Detail for Spanish and Portuguese Ancestry

Some types of close relatives, like aunt, uncle, half-sibling, nephew, niece, grandparent, and grandchild have very similar patterns of shared DNA, making predicting those relationships from DNA alone difficult. That’s why some customers might see someone incorrectly labeled as one of these relationships. To help improve detection of these relationships, 23andMe is now using a new technique that analyzes DNA from full siblings.



23andMe, like other companies, uses shared segments of DNA to detect customers’ relationships to each other. But unlike other companies, we also combine information from every pair of relatives using 23andMe’s <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-research/large-human-pedigrees/">Bonsai software</a>. In addition to <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/ancestry-reports/23andmes-latest-feature-automates-genetic-family-trees/">building your 23andMe Family Tree</a>, Bonsai uses segments from multiple pairs of relatives at once, allowing it to make a better prediction than if we only analyzed you and each of your relatives one by one.&nbsp;



Still, no way of estimating relationships from DNA is perfect, and that’s true even for close relatives.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-table"><table><tbody><tr><td>Relationship</td><td>Amount of DNA shared (95% confidence interval)*</td><td>Age distribution 23andMe uses (95% confidence interval)</td></tr><tr><td>Half-sibling</td><td>~19.8-30.2%</td><td><style>
span:after {
content: "\2264";}
</style>
<style>
span:after {
content: "\2264";}
</style> 17.4 year age difference</td></tr><tr><td>Avuncular (aunt/uncle- nephew/niece)</td><td>~20.3-29.7%</td><td>17.5 &#8211; 39.3 year age difference</td></tr><tr><td>Grandparental</td><td>~18.7-31.3%</td><td>45.3 &#8211; 67.7 year age difference</td></tr></tbody></table><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">* Calculated using shared segments from the autosomes (i.e., excluding the X and Y chromosomes) from <a href="https://github.com/williamslab/ped-sim">simulated relatives</a>.</figcaption></figure>



<h6 class="wp-block-heading">Using ages or shared parents to distinguish relative types</h6>



Telling these relative types apart is especially difficult because the amount of DNA each type shares is almost identical (see the above table). Because of this similarity, Bonsai relies on customers’ self-reported ages to make a decision about their relationships.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Even though general age differences exist between these relative types—half-siblings are typically closer in age than aunt-nephew or uncle-niece relatives—there are always families that don’t follow these trends. In such families, Bonsai is prone to making mistakes. For example, as shown in the above table, Bonsai will often consider half-siblings who were born 20 years apart as avuncular or it will confuse a grandmother for an aunt if the grandmother is less than 40 years older than her grandchild.



It’s worth noting that if the parent who links two half-siblings, a grandparent and grandchild, or an aunt/uncle and niece/nephew is a 23andMe customer, Bonsai would detect this and get the relationship right in nearly all cases.&nbsp;



For example, in the figure below, if we had data for Ava and Beau’s parents, Bonsai would almost always infer their mystery relative correctly as the aunt of the two siblings. Still, not all families have these parents or other informative relatives tested, and in the end, Bonsai predicts a significant fraction of half-sibling and avuncular relatives (aunt/uncle or niece and nephews) incorrectly when it relies on age data alone to distinguish between them (see the table near the end of this post).



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Mystery-Relative.png" alt="" class="wp-image-31115" width="650" height="410" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Mystery-Relative.png 856w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Mystery-Relative-300x189.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Mystery-Relative-768x484.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 650px) 100vw, 650px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">On average, people share ~25 percent of their DNA with half-siblings, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, grandparents, or grandchildren. Based only on a DNA comparison of a pair of relatives, it is difficult to distinguish between these relationships and pinpoint the correct one.&nbsp; But there&#8217;s a simple trick to help narrow down the correct relationship when one person in the pair has a full sibling: If—at the same location in their genomes—a pair of siblings share identical segments of DNA with another relative, and those siblings do not share any DNA at those locations with each other, this often means that the relative is an aunt or an uncle to the siblings. Having more than 90 cM of such locations almost always means the relative is an aunt or uncle.</figcaption></figure>



A new approach for distinguishing aunts and uncles from other relative types



The ambiguities between these relationships would be impossible to fully resolve except for the fact that information from shared DNA segments can be combined and their positions analyzed across multiple relatives.&nbsp;



In the case of distinguishing avuncular from half-sibling or grandparental relationship types, we can leverage information carried by DNA segments that are shared between full siblings. Full siblings are related through both of their parents, and this leads them to have a somewhat unique pattern of sharing: an average of 25 percent of their DNA is contained in fully identical segments. This is roughly 880 centiMorgans in 23andMe customers. (<a href="https://isogg.org/wiki/CentiMorgan">CentiMorgans</a>, or “cM,” are a unit of measuring lengths of DNA.) In other words, full siblings have certain sections of their chromosomes where they each inherited a matching segment of DNA from their mom and, at the same location, a matching segment of DNA from their dad. With such high fully identical sharing rates, genetic relationship prediction methods rarely make mistakes when labeling full siblings.



<h6 class="wp-block-heading">A Technique for Detecting Aunts and Uncles</h6>



Researchers at Cornell University used this signature of fully identical segments from full siblings to build <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002929718301691">a technique for detecting aunts and uncles</a> of a pair of siblings even if their parent has not had their DNA tested. 



The idea is to find places where the shared segments between siblings Ava and Beau and their aunt or uncle indicate that the siblings’ parent has a fully identical segment with the aunt or uncle. If this recovers a lot of fully identical shared segments, we can be quite confident that the aunt or uncle is an aunt or uncle and not a half-sibling, niece, nephew, grandparent, or grandchild.



<h6 class="wp-block-heading">Full siblings </h6>



Consider the figure below that again shows DNA from the full siblings Ava and Beau, their father Tom, and the father&#8217;s full sister, Maria. In the highlighted regions, Ava and Beau inherited DNA from different copies of their father’s chromosomes: Ava inherited DNA from their father’s mom and Beau from their father’s dad. Because of this (and because they inherited DNA from different copies of their mother’s chromosomes), Ava and Beau have no shared segments with each other in the chromosomal region with a box around it. 



This fact allows us to reason about whether, in the boxed region, the untested father had a fully identical segment with Maria (the potential aunt). Sure enough, in this location, Maria is fully identical to Tom (has the same DNA as him) and has a shared segment to each of the siblings. All this allows us to conclude that, in this region, the father does have a fully identical segment to Maria, and, with enough of these present, the updated version of Bonsai would conclude that Maria is Ava and Beau’s aunt and not any of the other relationship types with similar amounts of shared segments.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="776" height="1024" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Fully-Identical-Graphic-Explainer-776x1024.png" alt="" class="wp-image-31116" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Fully-Identical-Graphic-Explainer-776x1024.png 776w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Fully-Identical-Graphic-Explainer-227x300.png 227w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Fully-Identical-Graphic-Explainer-768x1013.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Fully-Identical-Graphic-Explainer-667x880.png 667w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Fully-Identical-Graphic-Explainer-894x1180.png 894w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Fully-Identical-Graphic-Explainer.png 952w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 776px) 100vw, 776px" /></figure>



<h6 class="wp-block-heading">Can other close relatives have this pattern of shared DNA?</h6>



Importantly, neither a grandparent, grandchild, half-sibling, niece, or nephew is expected to have fully identical sharing with Ava and Beau’s parent, or with the parent of any pair of siblings. The key reason is that fully identical regions occur at places where two people inherited the same DNA from both their parents.&nbsp;



Because full siblings share the same two parents, fully identical regions arise most frequently between them. You can see this above by looking at Ava and Beau’s parent Tom and his full sibling Maria. A half-sister of Ava and Beau through Tom should not share fully identical segments with Tom because she would have inherited only one chromosome from him—and the other from her mother. That mother will typically be unrelated to Tom and so will not share DNA with him. Similarly, Ava’s grandson would inherit Ava’s DNA, but only on one of his chromosomes, making fully identical sharing with Ava’s father Tom impossible in nearly all cases. By the same token, Ava’s grandmother (Tom’s mother) shares DNA with Tom on only one chromosome, and Ava and Beau’s nephew, being Tom’s grandchild, could only inherit DNA from one of Tom’s chromosomes at any location.



<h6 class="wp-block-heading">Fully Identical Segments</h6>



Even though this technique&nbsp; is designed to detect aunts and uncles, when a half-sibling does not have these implied fully identical segments, that provides evidence that they are half-siblings, and this can override the age-based relationship detection in Bonsai.&nbsp;



For example, if two full siblings had a half-sister that is &gt;20 years older than each of them, the old version of Bonsai would predict the half-sister as the aunt of the two full siblings (assuming other close relatives such as the shared parent had not done a 23andMe test). However, the latest Bonsai version would look for implied fully identical segments, and, finding few or none of these, it would conclude that a half-sibling relationship is more likely than aunt. Therefore ages have less influence on the Bonsai relationship prediction for these classes of relationships (half-sibling, avuncular, and grandparent-grandchild) than before this new release.



<h6 class="wp-block-heading">Incorporating this technique into Bonsai greatly improves relative prediction accuracy</h6>



<figure class="wp-block-table"><table><tbody><tr><td>Relationship to full sibling pair</td><td>Percent correct without IBD011</td><td>Percent correct with IBD011</td></tr><tr><td>Aunt/uncle</td><td>98.7%</td><td>~100%</td></tr><tr><td>Half-sibling</td><td>75.6%</td><td>83.8%</td></tr><tr><td>Grandparent</td><td>97.9%</td><td>98.6%</td></tr></tbody></table></figure>



We have incorporated this technique (which researchers called IBD011 for reasons described in the summary figure below) into the latest version of Bonsai. The table above shows the percent of relatives that Bonsai correctly infers both without the IBD011 signal and with it. Bonsai does very well in both settings, but always much better when using IBD011, so it now works better at telling apart half-sibling, avuncular, and grandparent-grandchild relatives.&nbsp;



<h6 class="wp-block-heading">Here’s how you can apply this updated Bonsai method to your relative predictions:</h6>



You can use this updated Bonsai method by rebuilding your family tree. To do this, you can request a recalculation of your tree through a link in the DNA Relatives FAQ page, in the question called “<a href="https://you.23andme.com/tools/relatives/faq/#how_do_i_recalculate">How do I recalculate my tree?</a>”&nbsp;



The 23andMe database currently includes over 2 million customers who could be affected by this update, which translates to many thousands of relationships potentially changed. For those of you with a full sibling and a predicted half-sibling, aunt, or uncle, the updated Bonsai may produce a different (and more trustworthy) tree.&nbsp;



Keep in mind that unfortunately your tree annotations don’t carry over when you rerun Bonsai. Still, some of you will see changes and the predictions Bonsai now makes are much more reliable for the close relationship types discussed here.



<h6 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-is-ibd011">What is IBD011?</h6>



On average, people share ~25% of their DNA with their half-siblings, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, grandparents, or grandchildren, among a few other less common relationship types.&nbsp;



Based only on a DNA comparison of a pair of relatives, it can be very difficult to distinguish between these relationships and pinpoint the correct one.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="756" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/IBD011-Image-1024x756.png" alt="" class="wp-image-31117" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/IBD011-Image-1024x756.png 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/IBD011-Image-300x221.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/IBD011-Image-768x567.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/IBD011-Image-880x650.png 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/IBD011-Image-1180x871.png 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/IBD011-Image.png 1390w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



But there&#8217;s a simple trick to help narrow down the correct relationship when one person in the pair has a full sibling: If — at the same location in their genomes — siblings share identical segments of DNA with a relative, and those siblings do not share any DNA at those locations with each other, this almost always means that the relative is an aunt or an uncle.&nbsp;

Ancestry Service — Page 9