Megan Runge has dark curly hair and the kind of smile that invites you in.
Perfect for a curious college student with a summer job scooping gelato at the beach in Florida.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-20027" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Megan-Photo-1-225x300.jpg" alt="Megan Photo 1" width="225" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Megan-Photo-1-225x300.jpg 225w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Megan-Photo-1-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Megan-Photo-1-660x880.jpg 660w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Megan-Photo-1-885x1180.jpg 885w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Megan-Photo-1.jpg 1452w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px" />
It was that same openness and curiosity that drew her to 23andMe. An adoptee, Megan didn’t know anything about her biological parents or her family history.
“I wanted to know about ME,” she said about her decision to get tested.
<h6>Using 23andMe</h6>
Megan has the kind of features that offers a hint of mystery, and for years she’d get questions about her background; questions she couldn’t answer.
Then she tested with 23andMe.
“I counted down the days until the results came in and when they did I almost cried,” said Megan. “After 19 years of not knowing anything, and then just from spitting in a tube, I have a pile of information all about me.”
<h6>Learning More</h6>
All of it was new to her. She spent hours poring over her results fascinated by both the important and seemingly trivial details.
“I learned a lot of information … which was very valuable because I really don&#8217;t know anything about my biological background,” she said.
But for Megan it was looking at her genetic ancestry that most surprised her.
“When I was younger everyone just assumed I was Hispanic,” Megan said smiling. “I assumed I had some sort of mixed ancestry, but I never knew.”
<h6>Mixed Ancestry</h6>
Now she knows that she is part Irish, part Scandinavian and part African. And she has some Native American ancestry as well.
“I thought it was so cool,” she said.
When she first got her results she was fascinated.
&#8220;I remember when I first got it I looked at it every day, multiple times a day,&#8221; Megan said. &#8220;I still look at it from time-to-time just to, I don&#8217;t know, just to see it.&#8221;
23andMe provides genetic testing services for informational purposes; your results may or may not help you to search for or identify relatives or family members.

23andMe Blog

23andMe Blog Team

This Is About Me

23andMe’s popular Ancestry Composition just got a little better.
The feature estimates what percentage of your DNA comes from populations around the world, breaking down the Asian, African or European ancestry to give you insight into the <a href="https://www.23andme.com/ancestry/">geographic origins of your ancestors</a> going back many generations.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-19805 size-medium" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/African-American-Example1-300x220.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="220" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/African-American-Example1-300x220.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/African-American-Example1.jpg 661w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Customers should start seeing the update to their Ancestry Composition over the next several weeks. It will offer people with African or Asian ancestry greater detail than they had before. We added several additional reference populations – for a total of 31.
Customer’s ancestry results are broken down by region, and then subregions and then even finer detail. So for example, we may breakdown the results of someone of African Ancestry by first identifying the percentage of “Sub-Saharan African Ancestry.”
That in turn might be broken down between percentages of west, African, central and south African.
The update allows 23andMe to offer individuals with African ancestry more detail into whether their ancestors came from eastern Africa, western Africa, southern Africa or central Africa. This is similar to how 23andMe reports out data for people of European ancestry, but 23andMe is not yet able to break down African ancestry by country or tribe. We are currently working on an <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-research/23andmes-african-ancestry-project/">African Ancestry Project</a>, which we hope will ultimately improve results for people with African ancestry.
<div id="attachment_19787" style="width: 291px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-19787" class=" wp-image-19787 size-medium" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Asian-Ancestry-281x300.jpg" alt="" width="281" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Asian-Ancestry-281x300.jpg 281w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Asian-Ancestry.jpg 500w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 281px) 100vw, 281px" />An example of an Asian American&#8217;s ancestry results.</div>
Customers with Asian ancestry will get much more detail into their ancestry, breaking ancestry between eastern Asia, southeastern Asia and south Asia.
In addition the update will now provide much more detail for customers with East Asian ancestry by breaking down that ancestry among five countries – China, Japan, Korea, Mongolia and eastern Russia (people with Yakut ancestry).
23andMe is conservative in making ancestry assignments, so in many cases we may list a certain percentage of a customer’s results as “non-specific” to a particular region. A customer’s results may include a certain percent of “Non-Specific Northern European” ancestry, for example.
That simply means that while 23andMe has identified the broader region of their ancestry, we do not have enough information to be able to predict the country of origin for that ancestry. We do offer customers the opportunity to select a more “speculative estimate,” which can sometimes give them more detail.

23andMe Makes More Improvements to Ancestry Features

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-19265 size-full" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Mike-Lattimore-02-scaled.jpg" alt="" width="2560" height="1707" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Mike-Lattimore-02-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Mike-Lattimore-02-300x200.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Mike-Lattimore-02-768x512.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Mike-Lattimore-02-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Mike-Lattimore-02-880x587.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Mike-Lattimore-02-1180x787.jpg 1180w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px" />
Mike Lattimore felt a mix of anxiety and dread about visiting Africa, so fraught it was with the scars of slavery.
But standing on the shores of what is known as the “Slave River” near the Cape Coast of Ghana, where men and women were once bathed before they were sold into slavery, Mike felt a sense of peace instead of horror.
“We had a ritual,” he said.
In his journey to explore his ancestry, Mike, a 57-year-old who lectures on cyber security, turned to 23andMe’s genetic testing to guide the way.
Using 23andMe’s ancestry tools, Mike learned more about his mixed heritage rooted in both Africa and Russia. The information has filled in big gaps in his family history and helped Mike add more pages to what he likes to call “The One Story” tracing back the lives of his ancestors.
“23and me pointed me in the right direction in terms of knowing which records to sift through, which direction to go,” he said.
Standing there with other African Americans, Mike felt he was answering the prayers of his ancestors, a plea that their children and children’s children would be better off than they were. He saw evidence of that answered prayer in his own life – his family, his job and the things he’d achieved–and in the fact that he was able to return to tell the story of what had happened there.
<div id="attachment_19260" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-19260" class="size-medium wp-image-19260" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Mike-Lattimore-08-300x200.jpg" alt="A photo of Mike's mother in front of some art from Africa." width="300" height="200" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Mike-Lattimore-08-300x200.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Mike-Lattimore-08-768x512.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Mike-Lattimore-08-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Mike-Lattimore-08-880x587.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Mike-Lattimore-08-1180x787.jpg 1180w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />A photo of Mike&#8217;s mother in front of some art from Africa.</div>
“It was a powerful and healing experience,” he said. “Good indeed did come out of that story. Light came out of the darkness of what happened there.”
His results from 23andMe didn’t just point him to Africa, but to his European ancestry and it reminded him of the interconnections of all people.
With his results he knew that his ancestors were likely from West Africa, but here was more than the science pointing him in that direction. When he walked among the Fante people he was overcome with a strong sense of kinship. They had the same orientation toward the water and fishing his own family had.
“I was struck by the people, there was something about the music and the energy it just felt right,” he said.
He knows that his E1a haplogroup points to ancestry in West Africa, but beyond the test results, Mike felt something deeper. He felt he was one of them.
The journey back to Africa capped a more than ten-year quest to discovery his ancestry, a hunt that included finding birth and death certificates in a rural town in Kentucky, contacts in Newfoundland and a convent in Baltimore.
The results from 23andMe also linked him to his mixed ancestry, one that is rooted in Africa, but includes both Jewish and, surprisingly to him, Scandinavian ancestry.
“My ancestors came from disparate places on the planet but all have lived the story of the struggle to seek a better life,” Mike said. “When I think about it, it gives me goose bumps because I am the sum total of all that they were, and now, I am the keeper of the memory.”
Some of that history Mike had heard from his own father. He heard about his great grandfather, Rush Green, who’d been owned by a man named Miller. Upon gaining his freedom his grandfather took the name “Green,” because he liked it.
“He told Papa, ‘a man has got the right to name his-self.’”
In his chronicling of his “One Story,” Mike has found his great grandfather’s grave in Paducah Kentucky, an “Aunt Minnie,” born in Russia whose native language was Yiddish, and records of his mother’s life being raised by the Oblate Sisters of Providence, an order of black Catholic nuns in Baltimore. He found records of his grandmother, Mary Brace, a white Canadian woman who had to give up his mother for adoption.
Through 23andMe he’s found relatives he didn’t know he had and he continues to fill in more pages of his family history.
“I strongly feel that we should invest in finding our ancestry because it really helps us as human beings not only to have a legacy that we can pass down but also to help with the healing,” Mike said. “Our country has experienced a great rift in that we have never fully investigated what happened. You’ve got to know where you’ve been so that you know where you’re going.”
23andMe provides genetic testing services for informational purposes; your results may or may not help you to search for or identify relatives or family members.

The Keeper Of Memory

Editor&#8217;s note: Alice dropped us a line to update us on her story. 
&#8220;23andme has helped me AGAIN with my ongoing search! If you&#8217;ll remember I&#8217;m adopted and found my bio mom via information I got from the 23andme test &#8211; but when I found my bio dad, it turns out HE was adopted too! Now I am on the trail of my father&#8217;s biological father.&#8221; 
Alice Toler is an accomplished artist and writer, but she calls herself a nerd of sorts. 
Really more than that – for most of her life Alice has felt disconnected from others, more like “an alien.”
“My mind doesn&#8217;t seem to work like other people&#8217;s,” Alice said. “Throughout my life I felt a little bit like I’d been beamed down from some other place. I later learned that a lot of adoptees feel like that – disconnected from others in some way.”
<div id="attachment_19163" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-19163" class="size-medium wp-image-19163" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Alice-T-at-7-w-her-dad-at-7-300x224.jpg" alt="Alice at 7 with a photo of her biological dad at the same age." width="300" height="224" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Alice-T-at-7-w-her-dad-at-7-300x224.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Alice-T-at-7-w-her-dad-at-7-768x574.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Alice-T-at-7-w-her-dad-at-7-1024x765.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Alice-T-at-7-w-her-dad-at-7-880x657.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Alice-T-at-7-w-her-dad-at-7-1180x881.jpg 1180w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Alice at 7 with a photo of her biological dad at the same age.</div>
That feeling changed a bit recently when she met her birth mother for the first time with the help of 23andMe and a lot of detective work of her own.
So perhaps it was appropriate that Alice met her mother for the first time in the otherworldly landscape of the Black Rock desert in Nevada. For a week each year, this wasteland hosts an “ephemeral city” of tens of thousands of unconventional thinkers at the annual Burning Man festival, where West-coast tech gurus and professional engineers meet hippies and alien abductees to create some of the most ambitious interactive art on the planet. Though off-season and empty of revelers during their day spent there, the open desert provided a fittingly uncanny backdrop for the first intense exchange of information between a woman and her child, separated at birth.
“The experience was surreal,” Alice said. “She was so happy to meet me, and she has a friendly dorkiness to her that suddenly opened a window of understanding onto my own dorky personality. We are nerds together!”
The story of how Alice found her mother is long and complicated, involving decades of on-again and off-again searching. But her big break came after finding a distant cousin through 23andMe.
Although she was adopted by a British couple in the Bahamas, she turns out to have genetic family roots in New Mexico and also discovered she has Native American ancestry. Finding her birth mother and then her birth father, and learning about her ancestry, grounded her in a way she never thought possible.
“I went from having no information at all, to finding out that I have extensive recorded family lines on my mother&#8217;s side–in fact, my grandmother&#8217;s family is recorded all the way back to the Spanish conquistadors,” Alice said.
And her life is richer, she said.
“Most people only have two parents and two ancestral lines,” she said. “I have four parents, more cousins (both adoptive and genetic) than I can count, ancestral lines documented back hundreds of years, AND the challenge of a new mystery to solve. I am truly lucky.”

Connecting With The Past

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

23andMe’s Tools Help Solve Ancestry Mystery

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

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

Ancestry at 23andMe: New Insights for Sheridan

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-11797" title="CeCephoto" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/CeCephoto.jpg" alt="" width="114" height="162" />
December was a busy month for 23andMe and in the midst of the hubbub we put out <a href="https://www.23andme.com/ancestry_composition_guide/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Ancestry Composition</a>, an amazing feature that gives finer detail of an individual’s heritage going back generations.
Since its release, we’ve heard some great feedback saying the feature has set a new standard in the industry. Yeah, we think so too, but don’t just take our word on it.
Genetic genealogist CeCe Moore recently reviewed the top genetic ancestry tools on the market. Her conclusion after looking at them all? 23andMe’s Ancestry Composition is “the most informative and flexible” of the lot.
CeCe hasn’t been the only one to review the new feature favorably, particularly for its ability to return meaningful results for people of mixed ancestry, but as always she does so with a lot of insight into how to use these tools.
In the review, CeCe notes that she has relationships with all the services she reviews, including 23andMe, where she advocates on behalf of customers as one of our volunteer Ancestry Ambassadors.
Her popular blog Your Genetic Genealogist has become a go-to site for anyone interested in using both traditional genealogical search tools along with genetics. CeCe, who also works as a television producer and is a Southern California Regional Coordinator for the International Society of Genetic Genealogy, has a lot to say about Ancestry Composition and even has a few nits about the feature. We will address many of them over time.
Take a look at CeCe’s review and see what else she has to say about the wonderful world of genetic genealogy.

23andMe’s Ancestry Composition Driving Circles Around the Rest

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

23andMe’s Newest Feature Explores Your Ancestry

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-15035 size-medium" title="Alyssa photo" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Alyssa-photo-234x300.jpg" alt="" width="234" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Alyssa-photo-234x300.jpg 234w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Alyssa-photo-768x983.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Alyssa-photo-800x1024.jpg 800w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Alyssa-photo-687x880.jpg 687w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Alyssa-photo-922x1180.jpg 922w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Alyssa-photo.jpg 982w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 234px) 100vw, 234px" />
This is a guest post from a 23andMe customer, who took a journey to learn about her ancestry.
By Alyssa Gradstein
I took the 23andMe DNA test to find out who I was.
I was adopted and ethnically mixed. I can’t count the number of times in my 30 years I’ve been asked:
“What are you?”
It stung every time someone would decide for themselves what I am. I needed to know who I was and where I came from.
I was fortunate to meet my biological mother but never my biological father, who my biological mother never knew herself. In addition to the common questions regarding health and genetics, I’d always wondered about my biological father’s background. I knew he was African-American, but I wanted to know more about my roots.
Because I’ve always wondered about myself, I often lacked the confidence I see in others who know themselves fully. I believe, to be a complete person, you need to be confident in yourself and who you are before you can be that person for others.
After taking the 23andMe DNA test, I found I was most genetically similar to people who come from Ghana in Africa.
I immediately made the decision to visit. I was totally open to the journey ahead. 
<iframe loading="lazy" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dVFLJRkPMbc" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0"></iframe>
When I landed in Africa I felt like I’d finally come home.
When I first decided to go, I’d researched different trips and I found an organization I could wholly identify with. I discovered the Happy Kids Foundation.
I am a teacher with a decade of experience. I have always loved helping children find their own voice, their self-esteem. I want them to know how important they are as individuals. As an adopted person, I understand the feelings of neglect. I understand feeling disconnected and what it’s like not knowing your personal history. I understand that these children need extra love and nurturing. That’s why when I went on my personal journey of self-discovery in Africa, I pointed myself toward the Happy Kids Foundation.
Happy Kids was founded in 1995 in order to provide housing and schooling for orphans and underprivileged children in the rural region of Wegbe, Ghana. The month I spent volunteering at Happy Kids was unforgettable. It changed my life, forever.
In Africa, I learned about my culture, what it meant to be a member of a community, and what it felt like to work hard for the people you love. Touring the slave castles there gave me an incredible sense of empowerment and an appreciation for my freedom that I had so often taken for granted.
I am forever grateful to 23andMe. With their help, I was able to find my missing pieces. A few years ago, I didn’t know who I was. 23andMe helped me find my story
Most importantly, when people ask: “What are you?”
I have an answer for them.
23andMe provides genetic testing services for informational purposes; your results may or may not help you to search for or identify relatives or family members.

Ancestry Composition — Page 7