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quirkybookworm
May 21st, 2016, 09:48 PM
A few months ago, I did 23andMe. 23andMe is a service where you buy a kit, spit in a tube, mail it across the country, and then they tell you all kinds of things about your genetic makeup; if you're a carrier of any genetic diseases, what your ancestral composition is, what your haplogroup is, and even certain physical traits. I thought that some of you might be interested in the results that I got that were hair related, and their accuracy. For all of them except the first one, I've also included the average for European users for comparison purposes -- mine are the ones on the left and the European averages are on the right. :)

The first one is 'Newborn Hair Amount'. This tells you how much hair you should've had as a newborn based on your genes. For me, this one was incorrect as I had a lot of hair as a baby. Apparently, my dad's first words when he saw me was, "Look at all that hair!". So, this one wasn't right for me.

http://s32.postimg.org/g9d9jtws5/baby_hair.jpg (http://postimage.org/)

The next one is about a Widow's Peak. I am unlikely to have a widow's peak, and I don't. So, for me, this one was right.

http://s32.postimg.org/7omab0nud/Widow_s_Peak.jpg (http://postimage.org/)

The next is hair texture! This predicted that I was most likely to have slightly wavy hair which is spot on.

http://s32.postimg.org/f0wa0t6wl/Texture.jpg (http://postimage.org/)

The next one is on hair color. I'm most likely to have light brown or dark brown hair. I have red hair so none of this chart was really applicable to me. I do, however, find it quite interesting that my odds of having dark brown hair are 31% and then they drop to 1% when it comes to having black hair -- I just thought that such a sudden drop was quite interesting. :D

http://s32.postimg.org/3xrtmk4l1/Brown_Hair.jpg (http://postimage.org/)

Lastly, the one that shocked my socks off, red hair! According to these percentiles, I should not have red hair which is really surprising to me considering that not only am I a redhead but so are the majority of my family members. Makes me wonder if there might be a redhead gene that they haven't discovered yet.

http://s32.postimg.org/51cwurbn9/red_hair.jpg (http://postimage.org/)

So, overall, I think 23andme was fairly accurate. I think that it was a lot more accurate in predicting other traits (eye color, skin color, chin type, etc) then it was in predicting hair related things, but it definitely got some things right which I think is pretty cool. I just wish it could predict terminal length! :p

embee
May 22nd, 2016, 05:34 AM
I've never done 23AndMe, and did not know they reported this kind of thing. :) Interesting. I'm not a red-head, but was born with red hair. It went to blonde when I was a toddler and then to "dirty blond" as I got older. Now mostly brownish.

Adorkable One
May 22nd, 2016, 05:49 AM
Both of my parents did the Ancestry DNA tests. They were okay, they only analyze ethnicity of course. They're still pretty vague on top of that. Example, if you're Native American, it highlights all of Canada, all the way down to South America. It isn't able to tell you what tribes you were from. I suppose that's understandable. However it will also say things like "Iberian Peninsula" rather than "Spain" or "Portugal." My dad was over 60% Western European. We know we're german...yet the test results stay vague, and say it could be anywhere from French to Polish. Not as in depth as I'd like at all. I guess you're supposed to piece together the puzzle yourself.

Anyway, to the topic.....I asked my parents to get me the 23AndMe test for my birthday. I had no idea it had so much stuff on hair! Lol. Now I want it even more.

Viola88
May 22nd, 2016, 10:22 AM
I'll have to dig deep like you but I had a similar outcome with red hair. 23andme says "Does not have any of the variants in the MC1R gene tested by 23andMe. Less than 1% of 23andMe customers with this result report having red hair."

I think part of it is they don't test all the known genes.

lapushka
May 22nd, 2016, 10:26 AM
Just makes me wonder if the things they can't tell out of what you provide (spit) aren't just statistics? :confused:

pastina
May 22nd, 2016, 01:47 PM
I did 23 and me and felt it was the biggest waste of time and money. It was very non-specific when it came to lineage, like Adorkable said about Ancestry, and all the other info (which became available to us moooonths later) seems to be mostly based on user reporting? ...What good is that, lol.

Viola88
May 22nd, 2016, 01:59 PM
My 23andme health report showed a few things that I can take steps to help avoid.

Average risk of age-related macular degeneration 7% My percent based on genes 22.2%
Colorectal cancer 4.0% Mine 7.1% My grandmother had colon cancer.

The macular degeneration % scares the crap out of me to be honest but I have massively upped by consumption of fruits, leafy greens and other raw vegetables and nuts.

Yarrow
May 23rd, 2016, 08:03 AM
As far as I understand it, we carry much more DNA data within us then we actually display. And that might explain why our hair color and texture can change during our lifetime. It doesn't mean that our DNA has changed, just that hormones or something else, has triggered a change into what DNA traits we display. It is interesting that certain traits like eye color don't change after the initial baby stage, at least for most people, I think. But other features such as skin color and hair color can change.
The thing with the genetic testing companies is that they need a large database with many people participating to give more specific information.

That's probably why people with Native American ancestry have a more vague answer than those with European ancestry because the Native American data pool is much smaller then the European data pool because perhaps not as much people with Native American ancestry have participated up to now.
As for European ancestry given in terms as " from France to Poland", that is due to migration and border changes. It would be easier to pinpoint ancestry that comes from isolated mountain villages that have little contact with outsiders (if they were in the datapool) then ancestry from people who have migrated all across Europe. If you look at the history of Central Europe of only the last 300 years, you will see that it changed quite a bit. Disregarding that nationalist notions of "german" or "french" were not existent or barely forming. Thats why people like Pennsylvannia Dutch came from regions that now a day are considered German but they don't consider themselves modern german because that notion didn't exist at the time they were immigrating.
If you want to go beyond 23 and me in terms of analysing it, this guy (http://thegeneticgenealogist.com/2013/09/22/what-else-can-i-do-with-my-dna-test-results/) gives you a list of resources, mainly for lineage though.

lillielil
May 23rd, 2016, 08:28 AM
I've had tests for most genetic diseases, both those common to the general population and those particularly those associated with Ashkenazim, and that's all I really feel the need to know.

quirkybookworm
May 23rd, 2016, 05:18 PM
I've never done 23AndMe, and did not know they reported this kind of thing. :) Interesting. I'm not a red-head, but was born with red hair. It went to blonde when I was a toddler and then to "dirty blond" as I got older. Now mostly brownish.

My hair was black as a baby, fell out, grew in blonde and has gotten redder and redder ever since :) It’s kind of funny how much that hair can change during childhood.


Both of my parents did the Ancestry DNA tests. They were okay, they only analyze ethnicity of course. They're still pretty vague on top of that. Example, if you're Native American, it highlights all of Canada, all the way down to South America. It isn't able to tell you what tribes you were from. I suppose that's understandable. However it will also say things like "Iberian Peninsula" rather than "Spain" or "Portugal." My dad was over 60% Western European. We know we're german...yet the test results stay vague, and say it could be anywhere from French to Polish. Not as in depth as I'd like at all. I guess you're supposed to piece together the puzzle yourself.

Anyway, to the topic.....I asked my parents to get me the 23AndMe test for my birthday. I had no idea it had so much stuff on hair! Lol. Now I want it even more.

I was considering doing Ancestry as well as 23andMe as a very large percentage of my ancestral composition is British & Irish, and apparently AncestryDNA can break it down further and tell you what what percent is Irish and what percent is British/Scottish/Welsh which I would be interested to know.
I think the reason why it’s so vague is because of how much our ancestors migrated. Because of how easy (well, not easy, but you know what I mean) it was to move about through Europe there’s a lot of genetic mixing which makes it hard to discern what, for example, is British and what is Irish, but they can tell me for certain that my ancestors came from the British Isles. It’s the same with the Iberian Peninsula -- I have a small amount of “Spain & Portugal” (on 23andMe, they’re grouped together just like ‘British & Irish’.) So, if you have a small area where a group of people migrated freely then it’s going to be very difficult to pick up the teeny tiny genetic differences and then define them by the borders that the countries have today (that might not even have existed back then).

Finding German in DNA is apparently very difficult. Often times, it will show up as something else, or as ‘broadly Northwestern European’ as a lot of mine did. I showed up 7.3% German and 8.5% Broadly Northwestern European when the research that I’ve done into my family tree shows me that all of that should be showing as German. So, essentially, you have to be very, very, German to show any German which stinks, but what can you do? I’m sure that as time goes on and more people submit samples then things will get more specific :)



I'll have to dig deep like you but I had a similar outcome with red hair. 23andme says "Does not have any of the variants in the MC1R gene tested by 23andMe. Less than 1% of 23andMe customers with this result report having red hair."

I think part of it is they don't test all the known genes.

I think that, currently, (I could be wrong!) they test for three mutations associated with redhair. However, there are countless gene mutations that could possibly cause redhair that they don’t test for so it’s understandable that a small portion of us wouldn’t show as ‘most likely a redhead’.


My 23andme health report showed a few things that I can take steps to help avoid.

Average risk of age-related macular degeneration 7% My percent based on genes 22.2%
Colorectal cancer 4.0% Mine 7.1% My grandmother had colon cancer.

The macular degeneration % scares the crap out of me to be honest but I have massively upped by consumption of fruits, leafy greens and other raw vegetables and nuts.

I’m sorry to hear about your grandmother -- I know the toll that cancer can take on a family. I know that it must be incredibly scary to know that you’re at an increased risk for certain things, but on a brighter note -- you know what to look out for, and there are things that can be done that will lower your odds.

Unfortunately, I got in after they stopped giving those kinds of health reports so I had to go through another service. I found that I have basically every gene associated with obesity, and several genes associated with Alzheimer’s disease. However, I also found that I have a very rare gene variant associated with increased immunity to certain viruses (pneumonia, and meningitis, I believe -- among others.) so I suppose that you have to take the bad with the good.
A funny thing about that, on the topic of them not testing every gene, that service had a feature where it would estimate your blood type based on your genes (it couldn’t tell you if you were Rh+ or Rh- as 23andMe doesn’t test the genes associated with that, but it could tell you if you were A/B/O.) but it couldn’t guess mine. It said that I had blahblahblah (I don’t have the time to find the specific genes right how, haha) gene which indicated that I wasn’t type A, that I had blahblahblah2 gene which indicated that I wasn’t type B, and blahblahblah3 gene which indicated that I wasn’t type O. So, my blood type remains unknown, and I might be part alien haha :p

quirkybookworm
May 23rd, 2016, 05:19 PM
Just makes me wonder if the things they can't tell out of what you provide (spit) aren't just statistics? :confused:

I mean, anything is possible :shrug: However, considering how accurate it was in other aspects, I think that more than likely it’s just that they were wrong about a few things either because other genes that they don’t test came into play, or something in my body changed the ways that those genes are expressed. :)


I did 23 and me and felt it was the biggest waste of time and money. It was very non-specific when it came to lineage, like Adorkable said about Ancestry, and all the other info (which became available to us moooonths later) seems to be mostly based on user reporting? ...What good is that, lol.

I’m sorry that you had such a bad experience. I can definitely see how someone who knew a lot of their ancestral background going in would find it unhelpful. For me, as someone who didn’t know the anything about the majority of my genetic makeup, it was completely worth it. Not only was it useful in terms of ancestral history, but also for my carrier information because I didn’t know if there were genetic diseases or not for half of my family. So, in my personal situation, it was helpful for me.
Hopefully, over time, it will become more specific, and therefore more useful to everyone. :)


As far as I understand it, we carry much more DNA data within us then we actually display. And that might explain why our hair color and texture can change during our lifetime. It doesn't mean that our DNA has changed, just that hormones or something else, has triggered a change into what DNA traits we display. It is interesting that certain traits like eye color don't change after the initial baby stage, at least for most people, I think. But other features such as skin color and hair color can change.
The thing with the genetic testing companies is that they need a large database with many people participating to give more specific information.

That's probably why people with Native American ancestry have a more vague answer than those with European ancestry because the Native American data pool is much smaller then the European data pool because perhaps not as much people with Native American ancestry have participated up to now.
As for European ancestry given in terms as " from France to Poland", that is due to migration and border changes. It would be easier to pinpoint ancestry that comes from isolated mountain villages that have little contact with outsiders (if they were in the datapool) then ancestry from people who have migrated all across Europe. If you look at the history of Central Europe of only the last 300 years, you will see that it changed quite a bit. Disregarding that nationalist notions of "german" or "french" were not existent or barely forming. Thats why people like Pennsylvannia Dutch came from regions that now a day are considered German but they don't consider themselves modern german because that notion didn't exist at the time they were immigrating.
If you want to go beyond 23 and me in terms of analysing it, this guy (http://thegeneticgenealogist.com/2013/09/22/what-else-can-i-do-with-my-dna-test-results/) gives you a list of resources, mainly for lineage though.

Very well explained :heartbeat


I've had tests for most genetic diseases, both those common to the general population and those particularly those associated with Ashkenazim, and that's all I really feel the need to know.

I chose 23andMe over AncestryDNA for the carrier information, because I didn’t know any family health history on my mother’s side of the family so that was information that I wanted for if I choose to have children in the future. I’m just happy that testing for genetic diseases is where it is today, and how far it’s come over the last several decades -- these days we can have tests done without even going to the physician's that weren’t even possible just a few decades ago. :)

littlestarface
May 23rd, 2016, 06:22 PM
I wish I could get one of these tests, they look like so much fun and can say where you come from. Your so lucky to be able to have this opportunity.

missc1115
May 28th, 2016, 04:16 AM
It's interesting to hear others' results from 23andme. It told me I should have straight blond hair. In reality, I'm a wavy brunette. It also told me my risk for Alzheimers is 12.5% while the average is 7.1%, and my likelihood for breast cancer is a bit less than normal.