It seems like 23andMe is firing on all cylinders lately. They published some results from the 23andWe research program shortly after knocking out the bulk of the massive amount of DNA day orders in record time (most people I heard from got their results in less than 4 weeks). Of course there were a few outliers taking the full 8 weeks for processing and the unlucky 96 who got the wrong results but for the most part, 23andMe has been working at a furious pace from what I can see.

Following in the fast paced trend, they’ve recently released a new tool in Ancestry Labs called Ancestry Finder (currently in closed beta). I sent them a message asking to be included in the beta and they kindly added me. I spent some time testing out the tool and from what I can see, this is going to go far in increasing the amount of sharing between distant family members. Enough text, time for pictures.

The first thing I saw in Ancestry Finder

When I first opened the Ancestry Finder tool, my initial thought was “meh, this is going to be another of these things not applicable to African Americans.” As you can see in the image above, the information presented just wasn’t compelling…well non-existent really. Unimpressed but undeterred, I clicked to show the Advanced Controls. (Yes, I saw the big blue “how does this work” button but who reads directions?)

Advanced Controls

Advanced Controls revealed some settings that shouldn’t be hidden and shouldn’t be deemed “Advanced”. Why? Because this is where all the magic happens.

To explain the Advanced Controls, I have to back up a little bit and share how the Ancestry Finder works. On 23andMe there is a feature called Relative Finder (RF). RF basically compares your DNA to other members of 23andMe participating in RF and if a significant chunk of your DNA is identical, they can determine (to some degree) your relatedness. There is also a voluntary survey on 23andMe called “Where Are You From” that  asks you to detail your families ancestral origins to the best of your ability. Here is where Ancestry Finder comes in. If one of your Relative Finder matches has completed the “Where Are You From” survey, their answers are presented to you in a graphical format on Ancestry Finder.

Back to the Advanced Controls, there are 3 controls that can adjust what results you can view. I’ll go through each and kind of explain what they do.

Results from toggling the "Include matches primarily from US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand & South Africa" checkbox

The first thing anyone using this thing should do is check the box to Include matches primarily from US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. To be honest, I am not sure why 23andMe includes the option to hide those results. However, the option is there and the default is unchecked, which has the potential to hide a large portion of your matches.

Results from changing the "Number of grandparents from the same country" option to 1+

The second highly important option is the “Number of grandparents from the same country” dropdown. This allows you to choose which results are displayed based on how many of your matches grandparents are from the same country. The default is 4 so that if one of your RF matches has grandparents who are all from say, Ireland, that match will show up. Again, this default highly limits the amount of data that shows up for a reason I can’t yet discern. To see all the matches, I chose the 1+ option. This allows me to see all my matches responses to the Where Are You From survey, even in the case of people who don’t know where their grandparents are from.

Results from moving the "Minimum Segment Size" Slider down to 5cm.

Finally, there is a slider in the middle that changes how small a segment can be for it to be shown. I adjusted mine all the way down to 5cm from the default 10cm. Unlike the other two options, I can understand the default setting for this option. At 5cm, the RF match is probably in the Distant Cousin range and knowing where their grandparents originate probably can’t provide much insight into recent ancestral origins.

Those are the Advanced Controls. Again, I can’t figure out why those would be called “Advanced” as adjusting them is the only way to see anything of interest in the tool.

Hovering over individual segments.

One of the coolest things about Ancestry Finder is what happens when you hover over one of the colored segments. On hover, a small box pops up explaining each portion of the segment. In the example image to the left, I captured a couple results of what happened when I hovered over a segment. You can see the breakdowns for each color (in the top segment, Navy for Canada, Purple for Iceland, and Lime for the UK) as well as the Segment Length for each result.

I think Ancestry Finder is huge. Game changing huge. Paired with Relative Finder, its going to make 23andMe one of the most useful tools for Genealogy researchers. Of course, there are some tweaks I’d like to see. Like I mentioned above, the Advanced Controls definitely shouldn’t be hidden and some of the default settings should be changed. I would also like to see those “Your relative’s…” pop ups become clickable with the link going to the RF match’s profile.

I am interested to see if Ancestry Finder encourages more people to use Relative Finder. Right now, my RF response rate (matches that respond to initial contact) is about 33% and based on messages posted in the 23andMe community, that is fairly high. If other 23andMe members are anything like me, they’re going to want to see what all 23 chromosomes look like filled up with Ancestry Finder data. That, of course, requires increased interaction in Relative Finder so there is a good possibility RF usage will increase. In any case, Ancestry Finder is definitely a very useful addition to 23andMe’s tool belt. I look forward to seeing how the community responds once it comes out of beta.

Update: Looks like they took Ancestry Finder out of Beta today and now it is available for use by all 23andMe members. Nice!

My employer is an investor in 23andMe however, the views reflected in this post are mine alone and do not reflect the views of my employer.

…Joel C!

Thanks for your participation everyone!

A couple days ago, as a thanks for my participation, 23andMe gave me a code for a free Complete Kit, a $499 value. I toyed with the idea of which person in my family I was going to get to spit. I had this whole elaborate plan of finding one of my moms dad’s brothers sons and getting them to do it but then I figured, there is someone out there that needs this more.

So I’m giving it away. A Complete Kit includes (copying and pasting from the 23andMe website here):

• Ancestry

  • Relative Finder
  • Maternal Line
  • Paternal Line (for men only)
  • Ancestry Painting
  • Global Similarity

• Health (156 reports)

  • Carrier Status (24)
  • Disease Risk (81)
  • Drug Response (17)
  • Traits (34)

• Download your raw data

  Download your mitochondrial and Y chromosome DNA data, as well as data for nearly 600,000 other positions.

Enter by posting a comment on this blog post stating how a complete genotyping from 23andMe would benefit you. Entries will be accepted until June 17, 2010 11:59 PM PDT. I’ll post the winner on June 18.

The End. Have a happy summer people!

Disclaimers and other stuff:
Winner will be chosen at random (using a number generated at http://www.random.org/). This giveaway was not requested by or endorsed by 23andMe. My employer is an investor in 23andMe however, the views reflected in this post are mine alone and do not reflect the views of my employer. My employer is not a party to this giveaway nor does it endorse this giveaway, nor have I asked it to.

A while back, I told you all I finally spent the money and did the 23andMe thing and I promised I’d report back with results. Well, better late than never right?

Applicable Ethnicity? Mostly European.

While the 23andMe health data is pretty good and comprehensive, unfortunately, the research in that area has been focused mostly on people of predominantly European heritage (more on this later in the post). African Americans like me will still show results in this area but I’m taking the reports with a grain of salt.

Aside from the health data, 23andMe has added quite a bit of really interesting Ancestry data. For example, apparently my maternal haplogroup is L2c1, a haplogroup common among the Mandenka of Senegal, according to 23andMe.

They also do this really interesting thing called Ancestry Painting. It basically matches each little bit of your DNA to where it most likely originated. Based on my Ancestry Painting (in the image below) I’m 20% European. The history of slavery makes this entirely unsurprising.

100% Mutt

23andme recently released a new Ancestry feature in Beta called Relative Finder.  The feature will be released to all users in early January and from what I’ve seen of Relative Finder so far, this could be a complete game changer for those of us interested in Genealogy. Check out the portion of my Relative Finder results pictured below.

Hello European relatives of mine.

As an African American, this is Huge. Think about slavery for a moment. Those European roots included in my Ancestry Painting will never be documented anywhere and up until now, there was almost no way to find out who was tipping to the slaves quarters at night. Once released to all 23andMe users, putting together the puzzle pieces of Relative Finder matches and family history will make it possible, maybe even easy to figure out the unknown branches in family history. Knowing who was a slave owner could lead to knowing where a slave originated, which could lead to finding out EXACTLY where I or any other AfAm came from.

Clearly Relative Finder would be highly beneficial to most African-Americans. There is one small problem. The cheapest 23andMe service, the Ancestry edition, costs $399.00. The median annual income for most African-American families is $30,134 before taxes. Factor in taxes and one 23andMe Ancestry kit will cost a family 20% of the average AfAm families gross monthly income, nothing at all to scoff at.

What does this mean? Sadly, this groundbreaking tech will remain out of reach for many of the people who could use it most. When I asked 23andMe about this on Twitter, their response was mostly vague but leads me to believe their pricing model isn’t about to change anytime soon.

Long story short? Price changes unlikely in the short term.

Sucks right? The genealogy isn’t even the half of it. Remember earlier in the post when I mentioned that a lot of the health data is based on studies of people with European ancestry? Yeah. That’s not going to change anytime soon unless a) some researchers decide to focus on African-American DNA or b) the cost barrier is reduced, allowing for more AfAms to participate on their own.

If you can’t tell, this is a pretty big deal to me. A big enough deal that I wrote to the Oprah show to try to get her to cover the subject. I don’t think any of the AfAm “moguls” have devoted any cycles to the subject, save the brief run of the African-American Lives series. In a perfect world, the Oprahs, the Diddys, the Shaqs, and the Jay-Zs of the world would take some interest in all this but thats not likely to happen. Other than that, frankly, I don’t have a real solution to any of the issues I’ve written about here. Maybe one day the price of DNA testing will be low enough that cost won’t be a barrier for those people that don’t have an extra $400 laying around. If you are an African-American with that kind of disposable income available, I encourage you try out the 23andMe service. If you do and you get some Relative Finder matches, I’ll be more than happy to do a cursory building of your Family Tree on Ancestry.com for you. The more you know, etc.

Disclosure: My employer is an investor in 23andMe however, the views reflected in this post are mine alone and do not reflect the views of my employer. I paid full price for the 23andMe service and have not been offered any future discounts  for the service.