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What's it like getting your DNA results back from 23andMe

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Re: What's it like getting your DNA results back from 23andMe

#31

Post by nitrogen »

larrik wrote: post #2

This is posted on the very same day I heard from 23andMe received my and my wife's samples. Spooky. (I actually bought the kits on DNA day last year, and just haven't gotten around to sending them in until now, so this really is weird for me)

Considering how many people on HN are 23andMe customers, it's statistically quite likely that at least one HN reader would get an e-mail from 23andMe on the same day a related HN article is posted :).

Re: What's it like getting your DNA results back from 23andMe

#33

Post by RK »

Didn't get mine done, but both of my parents had theirs done. My dad's was pretty much as expected, as far as ancestry (my grandmother is an avid genealogist). On my mom's side there is a lost of uncertainty about our ancestry. Of course, because you only see the mitochondrial DNA result for a female, its not as informative for someone who is probably a mix (like my mom). I think an admixture test will be the one that's really useful.

My dad downloaded his raw data and is enlisting me to use some of the 3rd party tools out there to do some other comparisons, but I haven't really dug into it yet. Home bioinformatics...

Re: What's it like getting your DNA results back from 23andMe

#34

Post by nollidge »

ghshephard wrote: post #10

I managed to get one of those $100 23andMe deals, so I bought Christmas presents for my mother, brother, sister in law, niece and nephew (Actually, I bought them wayyyy in advance on DNA Day - couldn't resist a great deal). About 7 weeks later, everybody's profile came online, and the relative finder instantly identified all of us and our probable relationship to each other (it was correct, in all cases). It's intere…

Even with a full DNA scan, SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms - one letter mutations) are mostly still what they'll be looking at. The difference is that instead of probing the genome for a million or so specifically predetermined SNPs (most of which are hardly well-understood), now you'll have every single base identified, which means that when some new important SNP is discovered, you (probably) won't have to get retested - you just pull out the old data.

Re: What's it like getting your DNA results back from 23andMe

#35

Post by prawn »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #25
tibbon wrote: post #7

I'm glad I did it, and the results didn't freak me out/scare me or lead to any massive revelations. For the $100 I paid, it was worth it. For the $500 that they normally charge, I felt it was too much. The stuff about family origin/history was pretty boring for me and just confirmed that I'm as white/boring as they come. Both lines from Europe? You don't say... But for someone who doesn't know that they are 100% Euro…

just confirmed that I'm as white/boring as they come What's boring about being white? Sorry, but this attitude strikes me as being nonsense political correctness. I'm quite sure that whatever race or culture your ancestors come from, there's plenty to be interested in on a personal level at the very least.

Perhaps that they feel white/boring and that their lineage traces to more of the same. An Asian person might not be particularly excited to learn that their ancestors trace back through China. Candidate one, however, might be more intrigued to find ancestry tracing through Northern Africa, or candidate through India - just guessing.

Re: What's it like getting your DNA results back from 23andMe

#37

Post by rms »

ghshephard wrote: post #10

I managed to get one of those $100 23andMe deals, so I bought Christmas presents for my mother, brother, sister in law, niece and nephew (Actually, I bought them wayyyy in advance on DNA Day - couldn't resist a great deal). About 7 weeks later, everybody's profile came online, and the relative finder instantly identified all of us and our probable relationship to each other (it was correct, in all cases). It's intere…

>I'm guessing that a full DNA scan will be available to the individual consumer for $1000 in about five or six years.

Should be faster than that. I'd put even money down at it being available in three years, probably even 2.5 or 2 years. Genomic sequencing has been one of the fastest Moore's Law analogues in history.

Re: What's it like getting your DNA results back from 23andMe

#39

Post by elizabrock »

endtime wrote: post #3

I've done 23andMe as well. If anyone's curious I'm happy to answer questions. Without prompting, I don't have much to add other than that the relative finder doesn't seem to work quite as well as I'd hoped. I do have one distant cousin on 23andMe, and it did find her, but assigned higher confidence/probability/whatever to a few tens of people who mostly seem not to be cousins. This might not be their fault - I imagin…

I have nearly a thousand relatives on Relative Finder. After connecting with a few of my "closer" cousins, I came to find out that we have Ashkenazi jewish origins.

According to one of my cousins, the relative finder is quite a bit different/better for her family members that don't have Ashkenazi heritage.

Re: What's it like getting your DNA results back from 23andMe

#40

Post by axod »

randallsquared wrote: post #30
axod wrote: post #13

Never understood why people pay money for this. It seems crazy to me.

It seems crazy to be curious about your genes? Could you elaborate on why?

Few reasons...

  * I don't think the tech is mature enough to be 100% reliable
  * It'll probably just worry people more than anything.
  * Doctors are trained. Some guy getting this thing isn't.
I think it's a hypercondriacs dream.
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