New research reveals how unique blood test ranges can improve health insights

Did you know that your blood test results might tell a more personal story about your health than you think? A recent paper in Nature by Brody Foy and colleagues has uncovered fascinating insights about one of the most common medical tests—the complete blood count (CBC). The CBC measures various components of your blood like red and white blood cells, and hemoglobin. 

The paper found that everyone has their own unique baseline, or “setpoint,” for their CBC values. If we look at the CBC results of two different people, their results will be much more different from each other than if we look at CBC results from the same person at two different points in time (even over 20 years). These personalized setpoints may actually be better at predicting your risk for certain diseases than relying solely on traditional reference ranges.

The Role of Genetics in Your Blood Test Results

Genetics may play a key role in shaping these setpoints. We already know that in certain cases genetics can predispose an individual to lab results outside the standard reference ranges; an example of this is Duffy-null associated neutrophil count.

• What Is the Duffy-Null Phenotype?
  Genetic variation in the ACKR1 gene determines Duffy blood group status. People who lack the Duffy antigens on their red blood cells have what’s called the “Duffy-null” phenotype, which is associated with protection against certain types of malaria. This also leads to lower overall neutrophil count in the blood without any negative health effects. 
• Why Does This Matter?
  Healthcare providers can sometimes see a low neutrophil count on bloodwork and order unnecessary followup tests that provide no benefit. These naturally low neutrophil levels can also lead to people with the Duffy-null phenotype being excluded from clinical trials or denied appropriate medication doses.

This is just one example of how genetic factors can influence blood test results, showing the importance of understanding personalized reference ranges that reflect individual biology.

Why Personalized Reference Ranges Matter

When it comes to blood test results, it’s clear that what’s “healthy” can be different between individuals due to genetics and other biological and demographic factors. Having more personalized reference ranges for blood tests would allow for better understanding of a patient’s actual health status, identifying risks more accurately to improve long-term health outcomes.

Potential benefits for healthcare

• More Accurate Risk Prediction: Personalized setpoints could help doctors identify risks for diseases more effectively.
• Fewer Unnecessary Tests: Patients might avoid unneeded follow-ups triggered by results that are technically outside the standard range but normal for them.
• Better Treatment Decisions: Tailored reference ranges could help ensure that patients receive the correct medication doses and aren’t excluded from clinical trials due to irrelevant test results.

This study underscores the potential of moving beyond generic reference ranges to embrace a more personalized approach to healthcare. By factoring in unique traits—like genetics and demographics—we can better understand what “healthy” looks like for each individual.

The post Why Your Blood Test Results Should Be Personalized to You appeared first on 23andMe Blog.

This is the first in a series of posts we plan to publish in order to help raise further awareness of lung cancer. We hope to highlight the work of the 20+ lung cancer patient advocacy organizations collaborating with us on our recently launched Lung Cancer Genetics Study. 

A lung cancer diagnosis is often overwhelming, bringing with it a flood of questions — some practical, some deeply existential. From treatment options to family support, patients are often left searching for answers amid difficult news.

For Ilana Stromberg, a mother of five who was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2019, those questions felt all too familiar. She knew firsthand the isolation that can come with this diagnosis and the desire to connect with others who understand. So when an oncologist friend called asking if she’d talk to one of his patients, Susan Troper, Ilana immediately agreed to reach out.

The two women had more in common than just their diagnosis: they were close in age, each raising five children, and shared a Jewish heritage. “We talked about a lot of things, often our kids, but also about symptoms, fears, treatments, doctors…. We became friends.” But there was something deeper they also shared — a determination to change the future of lung cancer for the next generation.

The Urgent Need for Lung Cancer Research

Lung cancer remains by far the number one cause of cancer death in the United States. In 2020, more people died from lung cancer than breast, colorectal, and prostate cancer combined, according to the American Cancer Society. Despite this fact, lung cancer receives only about nine percent of federal cancer research funding, and much of that research doesn’t incorporate genetics.

While most of us know that smoking increases one’s risk, between 10–20 percent of people who develop lung cancers have never smoked or smoked less than 100 cigarettes in their lifetime. Two-thirds of these people are women, like Ilana and Susan.  

Both Ilana and Susan shared concerns about the lack of options for patients and the need for more genetic research. They worried for their children, wanting to understand if genetic markers could reveal early signs of the disease. It was out of these conversations that the idea for a large-scale genetics study began to take shape.

Ilana’s lung cancer journey had motivated her family to start a non-profit called The Happy Lungs Project in 2021. The goal of The Happy Lungs Project is to advance research that leads to dependable treatments and a cure for RET-positive, non-small cell lung cancer. RET is a gene that acts as a biomarker — a sign of a specific subtype of cancer. When the RET gene is mutated, it can drive the uncontrolled growth of cancer cells, acting as the primary “driver” of cancers in people like Ilana. RET-positive lung cancer is relatively rare, accounting for about two percent of non-small cell lung cancers. There are many other genes (or biomarkers) associated with different lung cancer subtypes. For some, new treatments help slow the progression of the disease. However, scientists are still wrangling with understanding all the contributing factors in lung cancer.

It quickly became clear to Ilana that patient participation in research was critical for improving understanding of the disease and eventually developing new treatments. Through her work with The Happy Lungs Project, Ilana connected with leaders from other lung cancer advocacy groups, and she heard a common theme — an effort by many to create lung cancer registries, or databases containing detailed information about many people with lung cancer. Ilana recognized that a dedicated, national lung cancer registry serving all of these groups could be a game-changer for research, helping recruit patients for studies more quickly and investigating genetics along with other information about a patient’s cancer.

Although there were efforts in the past to create a broad lung cancer registry, there just wasn’t the means of making it happen, at least not until Susan’s involvement.

A Vision Grows: From Conversation to Collaboration

Susan Troper Wojcicki, who had an impressive career as a former CEO of YouTube and one of Google’s early employees, was also the sister of Anne Wojcicki, 23andMe CEO and co-founder, and Janet Wojcicki, PhD, an epidemiologist and professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco. Ilana asked Susan if she thought Anne and 23andMe would be interested in partnering on a lung cancer registry, speculating that 23andMe might already have in place the recruitment resources and privacy parameters to ensure robust enrollment and a safe and secure experience for patients.  

Excited about this possibility, Susan spoke to her sister Anne about the idea of creating a nationwide genetics study for lung cancer, one that could unite scientists, patients, and advocacy groups in a mission to understand the genetic factors behind the disease. 

In early 2023, Ilana got a text from Susan saying it was a go! Troper Wojcicki Philanthropies — the family foundation of Susan and her husband, Dennis Troper — would fund a collaborative effort, and Susan’s sister Anne’s company, 23andMe, could create a lung cancer registry and genetic research study. “Just like that, it was happening,” Ilana said. “It was born out of Susan’s unbelievable resourcefulness, untamed imagination, and staggering generosity.”

Building a National Registry with Patients at the Center

The aim of the Lung Cancer Genetics Study is to uncover genetic insights that could enable earlier detection, more effective treatments, and potentially even prevention strategies for lung cancer. What sets the study apart is its patient-centered approach. From the outset, Ilana and Susan recognized that meaningful change requires input from those directly affected, and they wanted to make sure that patient voices guided the design and implementation of the study. 

Marcia Horn, president and CEO of ICAN, International Cancer Advocacy Network,  leads several organizations that focus on specific lung cancer biomarkers. She recalls talking with Ilana about a patient registry and lung cancer genetics study that not only would involve all the non-small cell lung cancer biomarker organizations, but that Susan would convene a meeting for all the relevant organizations to participate in the planning. 

This collaborative spirit brought together scientists, clinicians, advocates, and caregivers from across the country. At a special summit, expert researchers and representatives from 12 lung cancer advocacy organizations met to hash out the initial vision for the study. 

“Ilana and I wanted to make sure that all the major players in non-small cell lung cancer biomarker support groups were invited to this meeting,” Marcia said. It was the first time that all the biomarker patient advocate leaders had ever been in the same room at the same time. “That was very exciting, and we’ve developed closer relationships and collaborations because of that meeting.” Since then, the number of advocacy organizations supporting the study has grown to nearly two dozen, with more than 25 patients and advocates participating as advisors.

After months of hard work, the study launched in July 2024 and enrolled 1,000 participants in less than six weeks, with a goal of reaching 10,000. In order to help more researchers make new discoveries, the de-identified data from the study will be made available to approved nonprofit researchers and institutions at no cost through a controlled-access database starting in the summer of 2025. De-identified data in the scientific database will include genetic data, data from surveys on participants’ lung cancer experience and, in some cases, data from medical records and tumor testing. Combining all these de-identified data types will help researchers investigate how genetics, environment, and other factors impact lung cancer risk and progression of the disease over time. The study is approved by a third-party ethics review board known as an institutional review board, or IRB.

According to Marcia, the Lung Cancer Genetics Study is a gift to patients, care partners, families, clinicians, and biomarker organizations everywhere.

“The results of the study will no doubt dramatically impact the field of lung cancer and could lead to the development of therapies that aren’t even conceived of right now,” Marcia said. 

Susan’s Legacy Lives On

Just as the Lung Cancer Genetics Study was taking off, Susan’s health declined, and she passed away in August 2024. Her legacy, however, lives on through this initiative. Her drive to create something lasting and transformative is a testament to her commitment to patients, families, and future generations.

Ilana reflects on the study’s creation with gratitude for the friendship that sparked a powerful movement. “She never gave up. Susan remains the ultimate force of good in our world,” Ilana said. “Susan is a daily reminder of how to live this precious and fragile life, and I feel so very blessed to have known her.”

Today, the Lung Cancer Genetics Study stands as a beacon of hope in lung cancer research. By involving patients, families, and the scientific community, it holds the promise of uncovering insights that could reshape the future of lung cancer care.

To learn more about the 23andMe study, our collaborators, and eligibility criteria, visit the Lung Cancer Genetics Study landing page.

The post A Legacy of Hope in the Fight Against Lung Cancer appeared first on 23andMe Blog.

This month, 23andMe is adding eight new historical individuals from the colonial port of Campeche to Historical Matches^SM, a 23andMe+ Premium^TM  membership feature. 

UNESCO World Heritage Site

The colonial port of Campeche, located in what is now the southeastern part of Mexico, was founded in 1540 by the Spanish conquistador Francisco de Montejo ‘the Younger’. The port is near the site of the old Maya village of ‘Ah Kin Pech,’ from which it derives its name. 

After its founding, Campeche quickly grew into one of the main ports of the Spanish Empire in Mexico, and it remained one of the region’s most prominent ports until the early 19^th century. In 2000, the United Nations declared the city of Campeche a UNESCO World Heritage site, recognizing its historic town center as a key landmark of early Hispanic society in the Americas. 

Within a few years of the founding of the port, an early colonial parish church was erected to serve the town’s inhabitants, including people of Spanish, Indigenous American, and African ancestry. The church continued to serve the community until 1680, when it was replaced by Campeche Cathedral, which is still in use. In 2000, Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia excavated the colonial-era parish church, discovering burials of 129 individuals.

Historical Individuals

In 2022, scientists sequenced the genomes of ten individuals who lived during the 16th–17th centuries and were buried in the cemetery of the Campeche parish church. Their goal was to learn about the lives of Campeche’s inhabitants and the social divisions that may have existed in the town’s earliest years. 

Of the ten individuals they sequenced, eight had entirely Indigenous American ancestry (most similar to contemporary Maya individuals from southern Mexico), one had European ancestry, and one had African ancestry. Interestingly, none of these individuals had any evidence of mixed ancestry, suggesting that despite living nearby under colonial rule, strong social divisions may have endured at Campeche across generations during this early colonial period.

Learn More

You can find out if you share a genetic connection to eight of the individuals from this study and learn more about colonial Campeche through 23andMe’s Historical Matches feature, which is available to all 23andMe+ Premium^TM  members.

The post New Historical Matches Could Connect You to Colonial Era Mexico appeared first on 23andMe Blog.

They were strangers to Jenn, so as she prepared for her first in-person meeting with her newly found brother and two sisters, her anxiety rose.

“Of course, I was nervous,” said Jenn, a 46-year-old who works in a New York real estate office. “I went over everything that can go wrong, you know, especially because of what happened when I reached out to my birth mother.”

That was in 2019. The state of New York had just opened adoption records. Jenn found the identity of her birth mother, carefully crafted a letter to her, and included photos of herself as a child and another one of her as an adult. Jenn didn’t want anything from her birth mother; she just wanted to connect. Instead of an embrace, she got the kind of response many adoptees fear the most.

“She doesn’t want to have anything to do with me,” Jenn said.

‘You Have Daddy’s Eyes’

So, five years later, after connecting through 23andMe to three half-siblings on her birth father’s side, Jenn was all butterflies. Then she walked into the pizza parlor where she’d be meeting Joe, Lisa, and Mechele. She heard Lisa say, “Welcome baby sister,” and she then got her first group hug.

“Sometimes when you meet someone for the first time, you’re nervous and you hold something of yourself back,” Jenn said. “There was none of that. It’s crazy how easily we got along.”

At one point, one of her siblings said, “You have daddy’s eyes.”

One minute, they were four strangers meeting for the first time; the next, they were family.

Creating Family Memories

That was on January 26th, 2024, the 30th anniversary of their father’s death. Their bonds with each other have only grown since then, including a bigger family reunion in August and plans to gather again for the holidays this year.

“I am looking forward to creating memories with my family and learning more and more about our father,” said Jenn. “23andMe was a blessing, and we are so very grateful for the opportunity to make our family complete.”

Getting to the point where she could sit at this much, much bigger family table this holiday season wasn’t easy. It was 46 years in the making.

Jenn, and her brother, were adopted from different families, but they always felt lucky to have a mom that loved them unconditionally.

“When I say, ‘my mom,’ I mean the woman who raised me,” Jenn said. “She is my mother.”

That’s never going to change.

Losing Mom

When, as young kids, she and her brother learned that they’d been adopted, they didn’t tell their mom.

“I couldn’t even think about looking for (my birth parents) while she was here because it would have broken her,” Jenn said. “I would not do that.”

For Jenn, being adopted felt special. She believed that unlike other kids who just get the parents they’re born to, she and her brother had been chosen by their parents, and they won the parent lottery with their mom.

“She was my world,” Jenn said, her voice filled with emotion.

When their mom died in 1997, Jenn was devastated. She was 19.

It would be a long time before she’d start searching for where she came from and who her birth parents might have been. It wasn’t so much to make a connection but more about trying to understand herself and her story.

“I wanted to know where I came from and who I was,” she said.

She loved her mom and loves her brother, but she also felt different.

“Growing up, my mom was very quiet, very calm, cool, and collected,” Jenn said. “My brother is also like that, and here I come along and I’m loud, I’m fresh. I’m the person at the party saying ‘let’s dance.’ I wanted to know why I was that way.”

Taking a Chance at Finding Family

Her first quest in 2019 started with getting ahold of her adoption records in New York and ended in rejection. She thought that was the end to her search for family.

“I closed the book on all that,” she said.

In 2017 she used 23andMe, but it wasn’t to find her family. She wanted to learn more about her ethnicity. She learned she was mostly British and Irish and had some German ancestry. She had some very distant cousins that popped up, but she didn’t really think about family connections. Then she got an email in December of 2023 notifying her that a relative had messaged her on 23andMe.

It was a message from Joe.

She scrolled down, saw his photo and that he was predicted to be a half-brother.

“I dropped my phone,” she said.

Meeting for the First Time

They feverishly began exchanging messages. Joe was as eager as she was to learn more. He eventually asked if he could loop in his sisters. Jenn thought, “Wait, I have sisters.” Then using Facebook, she was able to put more faces to names.

Along with Joe, there was Mechele and Lisa. They all had questions for her as well. Their dad had divorced from their mom in the early 1970s, and afterward he dated for a while. That’s when Jenn had been conceived, but the three siblings believe their father didn’t know anything about Jenn.

“He had no idea about me,” Jenn said. “Everyone swears that if he knew, he one hundred percent would have looked for me, would have found me, and would have been a part of my life.”

But he never got that chance, and then he died of a heart attack in 1994.

Nature Versus Nurture

Now Jenn is learning about her birth father from her siblings. She’s learning that they all share the same kind of boisterous personality as she does, and odd little things.

“Okay. So here’s one thing that happened when,” Jenn said offering one example. “We took a picture, all four of us for the first time and we’re all joking and just kind of sitting there living in the moment. And my sister Mechele goes, ‘Put a leg up!’”

She kicked her leg up and her sister grabbed it for the photo.

“I stopped for a second and she said, ‘Wait, what happened?’” Jenn said. “They all stopped and looked at me.”

That’s something she’s always doing for photos.

“I looked over at my boyfriend and we’ve been together for 20 years, and he just shook his head, (because) I do that all the time. I say, ‘Put a leg up!’ and you throw a leg up in the picture.”

It’s such an odd thing to imagine that could be something genetically shared, but it was also so distinctive like something she has always done.

“I was baffled, it’s so weird, but cool, in a cool way,” Jenn said.

Your People

 As she gets closer to visiting again with her newfound family for the holidays, Jenn also marvels at how fortunate she has been.

“It’s beautiful, this is my family, and I finally get like, I get it all. I get sisters. I get an extra brother. I don’t know how it was so perfect or how I’m so lucky. But I am. I’m the luckiest person in the world.”

There is no question that they are going to stay in each other’s lives. The family is just bigger now.

Her brother, who she was raised with, saw it too.

“He’s my brother. We’re not blood related, but we were raised together. And he said to me when he saw the photos of that first meeting, he said, ‘Jennifer, those are your people.’”

The post New Family Gathering This Holiday Season appeared first on 23andMe Blog.

People have come to expect the color pink to be worn and promoted throughout the month of October in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. But when November rolls around, what’s much less talked about is Lung Cancer Awareness Month — despite the astounding fact that lung cancer is the world’s most deadly form of cancer and kills more people each year in the United States than colon, breast, and prostate cancer combined.

In July 2024, 23andMe launched our 23andMe Lung Cancer Genetics Study, with the hope of understanding more about how genetics can influence lung cancer in order to improve detection, risk reduction, and care. With a goal of enrolling 10,000 people diagnosed with lung cancer, we partnered with over 20 nonprofits, advocacy groups, and research institutions to help advance this research. Working together, in just six weeks, we were able to enroll over 1,000 study participants, paving the way for future studies to advance our understanding of the disease, its risk factors, and potential treatments.

What wasn’t as publicized about this study is that it was created in close partnership with our CEO and Co-Founder Anne Wojcicki’s sister, Susan, former CEO of YouTube. Susan was shocked to learn at the end of 2022 that she had metastatic lung cancer. The more she learned, the more she realized there is an urgent need for better awareness, screening and treatment. Lung cancer can impact both people who have and have not smoked tobacco, but there has been a recent increase in lung cancer cases among people who have never smoked. Susan was also shocked to learn that only 5% of the people who qualify for lung cancer screening — people over 50 who have a 20 pack-year smoking history — get the low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) that detects early lung cancer. Lung cancer is often curable when it’s found early but difficult to treat once it’s metastatic. 

Susan tragically passed away in the summer of 2024. She was committed to advocating for additional lung cancer research in order to improve outcomes for other patients. Just before her death, she wrote a blog that she had planned to publish to raise awareness of the disease — including the need for further research and funding. To honor her legacy, Susan’s blog was publicly shared today.

We believe with more research, we can find ways to prevent, detect and treat this deadly disease. We also hope that lives are saved by encouraging high-risk individuals to get the recommended screening. By next November, we hope Lung Cancer Awareness Month gets the attention it needs. 

To learn more about the 23andMe study, our collaborators, and eligibility criteria, visit the Lung Cancer Genetics Study landing page.

The post Lung Cancer Awareness Is Important for All of Us appeared first on 23andMe Blog.

An update to our 23andMe Ancestry Service adds new granularity for people with British and Irish ancestry in the United States, allowing them to see if they are genetically connected to some of the earliest colonial settlements in the US, including Plymouth Colony and the settlers who arrived on the Mayflower.

This update includes hundreds of early British & Irish American Genetic Groups, helping customers connect back many generations to communities within the United States. Genetic Groups are groups of people with significant genetic similarity who may share ethnic identities, languages, or other similar characteristics.

Discovering a genetic link to one of these early colonial communities might help some people connect to history. Our scientists will continue to add additional “European Diaspora” Genetic Groups in the United States and around the world, studying communities of people with ancestry from other parts of Europe.

Mayflower Descendants

About four percent of 23andMe customers will see close matches to the “Mayflower Descendants” Genetic Group, while around 15 percent of 23andMe+ Premium members will see Distant Genetic Group matches to this group. Astonishingly, it’s estimated that there are 10 million people in the United States and up to 35 million worldwide who are directly descended from passengers of the Mayflower, according to the General Society of Mayflower Descendants.

This update follows closely on other updates looking at early migration patterns within the United States as well as other genetic groups around the world. We will continue to add more of these groups to improve results for our customers. Among those updates was a recent update looking at African American Genetic Groups. That update helped connect customers with African American ancestry to one or more of 213 genetic communities, primarily in the Southern United States—particularly to where their ancestors may have lived before the mass movement of southern Blacks known as the Great Migration.

Of the hundreds of genetic groups that are part of this update, 18 are linked to some of the earliest European colonial settlements in what was to become the United States. Although people of various backgrounds—Dutch, German, Swedish, and African, for example—inhabited those early settlements, this particular update looks at shared genetic connections to people with predominantly British & Irish ancestry.

Below we highlight two of the 18 Colonial American Genetic Groups included in this update. Learning more about these early settlements offer an opportunity to see beyond some of the idealized versions of early colonial America, and examine what colonization meant not just for those early settlers but for the indigenous people and cultures devastated by it.

In this post, we highlight two of the 18 Colonial American Genetic Groups included in this update.

The Mayflower and the First Thanksgiving

Ill-prepared for the arduous task of establishing a “new Jerusalem” on the shores of a protected bay at what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts, the settlers who arrived on the Mayflower in 1620 might not have survived if not for the Indigenous Wampanoag people.

Indeed, within a year of their arrival, as they prepared for what was to become known as the first Thanksgiving, only about 50 of the original 102 remained. The event aligns with traditional harvest celebrations that were part of European tradition and some point to other harvest gatherings celebrated by Spanish explorers in the 1500s in Florida and in Texas as the first Thanksgiving gatherings in North America. During that first Thanksgiving, which lasted three days, the 50 or so settlers gathered with about 90 tribal members.

The myth of that first Thanksgiving — a narrative created much later — often obscures the devastation brought by disease and war to the Indigenous peoples who had lived and thrived in North America for millennia. For many Indigenous Americans, Thanksgiving represents a vastly different perspective; rather than a moment of promise, it marks the beginning of centuries of displacement, disease, and violence. 

But the ethos of that first Thanksgiving—where people gathered communally and with gratitude for the harvest—is still worth celebrating as we work to understand all that was wrought in the complicated history of colonization in North America. The first settlers also signed the Mayflower Compact, establishing a framework for communal governing of the colony. Another not-well-known fact is that the settlers did not have any written permission to settle the area around Plymouth. They were meant to land further south. Some of the passengers questioned their right to the land, objecting that there was no legal authority to establish a colony and hence no guarantee of retaining ownership of the land they’d improved. In response to this, a group of colonists drafted and signed the Mayflower Compact.

Genetic Connections to the Mayflower

This latest 23andMe Ancestry Service update allows customers to determine if they are connected through shared ancestors to people who trace their genealogy back to the Mayflower. Customers linked to this group report ancestors primarily from the Massachusetts communities of Boston, Providence, New Bedford, Lynn, Springfield, Worcester, Hartford, Brockton, Weymouth, New London, Fall River, and Quincy.

The Virginia Colony and Jamestown

Before the settlers landed at Plymouth, the first permanent English settlement in the Americas was established at Jamestown in what was to become the Virginia Colony.

Unlike the settlers on the Mayflower, who were escaping religious persecution, the 100 or so men who settled at Jamestown in 1607 came to make money for the investors in the Virginia Company. Like at Plymouth, the survival of the colonists at Jamestown was tenuous at first.

The colonists and their indigenous neighbors, the Powhatan Confederacy, skirmished, and there were years of warfare; after the wedding in 1614 of Pocahontas, the daughter of a Powhatan chief, and John Rolfe, a tobacco grower, there were several years of peace between the colonists and the Powhatan until the early 1620s.

In 1619, the first 20 enslaved Africans were brought to Jamestown, beginning more than 200 years of slavery in what would become the United States.

Genetic Connections to the Virginia Colony

This update allows members with British & Irish ancestry to determine if they are connected through shared ancestors to people who trace their genealogy back to the Virginia Colony and possibly Jamestown. Many in this Genetic Group report ancestors from communities in what are now the states of Virginia and West Virginia Richmond, Lynchburg, Nashville, Danville, Petersburg, Amherst, Bedford, Halifax, Gretna, Charlottesville, Buena Vista, and Roanoke.

Jamestown was the initial capital of the Colony of Virginia until 1699 when it was moved to Williamsburg. While the earliest settlers were British, Poles and Slovak craftsmen arrived early in the colony’s history. Over the years, people of other nationalities—French Huguenots, Germans, Scottish, and Irish immigrants—eventually settled there.

Find out more

23andMe customers on the latest genotyping chip, V5, can see their Ancestry Composition here. 

Curious if you’re connected? Discover23andMe’s  Ancestry Service and more.

List of the 18 Colonial British & Irish Genetic Groups in the United States

1. Mayflower Descendants
2. Virginia Colonial Americans
3. St. Mary’s Descendants in Maryland and Kentucky
4. Northern Georgia and Alabama Colonial Americans
5. Coastal South Carolina Colonial Americans
6. Coastal Georgia Colonial Americans
7. Southern Mississippi and Alabama Colonial Americans
8. Coastal North Carolina Colonial Americans
9. North Carolina Piedmont Colonial Americans
10.  Northern Alabama Colonial Americans
11.  North Carolina Mountains Colonial Americans
12.  Western South Carolina Colonial Americans
13.  Blue Ridge Mountains Colonial Americans
14.  Central Appalachian Mountains Colonial Americans
15.  Central Alabama and Georgia Colonial Americans
16.  Southern Coastal Plain Colonial Americans
17.  New England Colonial Americans
18.  Northeast Colonial Americans 

The post Are You Genetically Connected to Early Colonial Americans? appeared first on 23andMe Blog.

A new update to the 23andMe+ Premium Historical Matches^SM feature allows members to learn if they are genetically connected to Vikings massacred in the Kingdom of England on November 13th, 1002 CE. This historical event came to be known as the St. Brice’s Day Massacre because it occurred on the feast day of St. Brice, a French cleric who lived in the 5th Century and was later canonized.

It’s a grim connection to the past, but this new update adds to the more than 500 historical individuals in 23andMe’s innovative Historical Matches feature.

These historical individuals are people who lived hundreds or thousands of years ago, including those killed on St. Brice’s Day from what is known as the Viking Age and individuals from ancient Rome, ancient China, or medieval Central Europe, to name a few. Some are known historical individuals like Beethoven, but most are nameless, like those killed over a thousand years ago on St. Brice’s Day.

How Historical Matches Are Made

Historical Matches identify places in your genome where you share identical DNA with ancient or historical individuals whose genomes have been sequenced, typically from archaeological studies.

For this latest update, the data comes from a 2020 study of the genomics of the Viking World.

As part of that study, researchers sequenced the genomes of historical individuals buried in two mass graves in England—one in Oxford and one in Dorset—providing new insights into their ancestry. 23andMe scientists have added publicly available data from 27 of these historical individuals who were very likely killed during the St. Brice’s Day Massacre. 

What Happened on St. Brice’s Day?

In the late 10^th and early 11^th centuries, the Kingdom of England faced relentless raids by Danish Vikings. Believing that the Danes were plotting to overthrow him, King Æthelred II of England, known as “Æthelred the Unready,” ordered a mass execution of all Danish settlers in his kingdom. 

Historians do not know how many people were killed on that day, but among those reportedly killed was Gunnhild, the sister of Denmark’s King Sweyn Forkbeard, along with her husband. Enraged by the murder of his sister and brother-in-law, Sweyn intensified his raids on England, eventually seizing the English throne in 1013 CE and forcing Æthelred into exile. However, Sweyn’s rule of England was short-lived; he died just five weeks later due to unknown causes (some sources say that he fell from a horse, while others say that he was killed). 

Unearthing the Past through Archaeology

In 2008, excavations on the grounds of St. John’s College at Oxford University led to the discovery of a mass grave that contained the remains of 33 men and two teenage boys. The skeletal remains showed evidence of sharp-force trauma, with wounds often inflicted from behind, suggesting the victims were attempting to flee.

A year later, in 2009, another mass grave was discovered in Dorset England, that contained the remains of about 50 men. Similar to the Oxford site, the men died violently. In this case, all had been decapitated, with their bodies carelessly thrown into the burial pit and their heads piled together at the southern edge of the grave. 

Although no historical records directly link either of these mass graves to the St. Brice’s Day Massacre, radiocarbon dating of the skeletal remains align with the date of this event. Further, the violent nature of the injuries the individuals sustained and the careless way in which they were buried are consistent with a massacre, offering further evidence of the brutal actions taken on that day.

Learn More

If you are a 23andMe+ Premium member, you can check it out to learn more about the St. Brice’s Day Massacre and to find out if you are distantly related to the Danish Vikings who died on this day in history or to hundreds of other historical individuals. 

Not yet a member? Learn more about all that 23andMe+ offers here.

The post Are you related to Vikings killed in the St. Brice’s Day Massacre? appeared first on 23andMe Blog.

Just in time for family gatherings this holiday season, 23andMe launched a new Records & Archives^SM feature that promises to make family tree building more accessible for its 23andMe+ Premium members customers. 

New Branches on the Family Tree

This easy-to-use tool leverages census records from the United States, Canada, and the UK and death records from the US. Enter a relative’s name and birthdate, and Records & Archives will search through historical documents to find a match and new information via ‘hints.’ While not yet a comprehensive records search, the new feature can help identify possible relatives in your family tree. We hope to add new functionality in the months ahead.

These hints may also uncover unknown family members, helping you create a fuller picture of your heritage. 

The tool takes some of the work out of building a simple family tree. It can help those looking to add names, dates, and hometowns to their family tree and map out relationships along the branches of that tree.

With this new feature, users can go beyond genetic testing and learn more about relatives who never had the chance to submit DNA samples, enriching their family tree with new names, dates, and relationships. 

The hints from 23andMe’s Records & Archives help users fill in the gaps, uncover lost branches of their family history, and add depth to the information they’ve already gathered.

A Few Clicks to Build New Connections

The new Records & Archives feature makes genealogical research more accessible and efficient.

It’s a simple but powerful way for customers to go beyond their DNA relatives and fill out their family trees using historical records. With just a few clicks, 23andMe+ Premium customers can now discover long-lost connections, solve a puzzle in their family history, or deepen their understanding of their heritage.

Find out More

All customers can add to their Family Tree and see if there are record matches, but only 23andMe+ Premium customers in the United States, Canada, and the UK can see details of those record matches and save them to their tree.  

23andMe Ancestry Service or Health + Ancestry Service customers can go here to upgrade to 23andMe+ Premium to use Records & Archives.

Not yet a customer? Learn more about all that 23andMe offers here.

The post Records and Archives appeared first on 23andMe Blog.

Every October, we celebrate Italian-American Heritage Month, which honors the accomplishments of Italian immigrants and Italian-Americans, who comprise the fifth-largest ethnic group in the United States. In celebration, 23andMe+ Premium members, using the Historical Matches^SM feature, “Historical Matches,” can now discover how they are genetically connected to the ancient inhabitants of one of Italy’s most famous cities: Rome.

The Ancient City of Rome

Rome was founded in the 8th century BCE. At the time, it was one of many independently governed city-states on the Italian Peninsula. By its peak, during the Imperial Period (27 BCE–476 CE), Rome had grown into a major cosmopolitan city with over one million inhabitants. It served as a center of commerce that linked people and goods from throughout the Mediterranean, the Near East, North Africa, and beyond.

The city of Rome served as the capital of the Roman Empire from its founding in 27 BCE until 330 CE when Emperor Constantine moved the capital to Byzantium (renaming it Constantinople in his honor). After losing its status as a capital city, Rome gradually lost its political prominence and experienced a dramatic decline in population size. Following the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century CE, Rome’s population fell to less than 100,000 people. It wasn’t until around the 14th century CE that the population size began to increase again. 

Despite its fluctuating political status, Rome endures as a cultural and religious center to the present day.

Ancient Roman Genomes Throughout History

In 2019, scientists sequenced the genomes of 127 individuals from 29 archaeological sites in and around the ancient city of Rome. To learn how the genetics of people living in the region changed over time, they sampled individuals who lived in the region over the past 12,000 years, from hunter-gatherers during the Mesolithic period (10,000–6,000 BCE) to the city’s inhabitants during the Medieval and Early Modern periods (700–1800 CE). 

The majority of the individuals that they studied lived in Rome during three key periods: 

1. The Roman Republic (509–27 BCE): Following the overthrow of the last Roman king (Lucius Tarquinius Superbus) in 509 BCE, the ancient Romans established the first republic–a system of governance in which power was shared through a complex system of checks and balances, giving members of the public increasing rights over time. During this period, the ancestry of the ancient inhabitants of Rome started to appear similar to that of many present-day Mediterranean populations. 
2. Imperial Rome (27 BCE–300 CE): This period spans the height of the Roman Empire, beginning when Augustus declared himself the first emperor of Rome and ending around the time when Emperor Diocletian established the Tetrarchy, dividing the rule of the Roman Empire among two emperors and their successors. This division paved the way for the eventual split of the empire into the Eastern and Western Roman Empires.
   During this period, ancient Rome’s inhabitants had highly variable ancestry, exhibiting strong connections to populations from the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East.
3. Late Antiquity (300–700 CE): During the Late Antique Period, Rome experienced a dramatic decline in its political influence and population size. The inhabitants of Rome continued to be highly diverse, but Central and Northern European-related ancestry started to become more common, possibly as a result of contact with invading populations, including the Visigoths, Vandals, and Lombards.

Learn More

In honor of Italian-American Heritage Month, we have added 25 historical individuals from these three critical periods in Roman history to our Historical Matches feature.

If you are a 23andMe+ Premium member, you can check it out to learn more about the ancient Romans and find out if you are distantly related to them or hundreds of other historical individuals. 

Not yet a member? Learn more about all that 23andMe+ offers here.

The post New Historical Matches Could Connect You to the Ancient Romans appeared first on 23andMe Blog.

With apologies to Walt Whitman, we all contain multitudes … of microbial cells, trillions of microorganisms that live in and on our bodies.

The human microbiome is vast and varied and accompanies us through our lives, changing as we age. As scientists continue to learn more about these microscopic ecosystems on our skin, mouths, and gut, we understand more and more about the sometimes surprising role they play in our health.

Researchers at 23andMe, in collaboration with the Michael J. Fox Foundation, recently published a study in Communications Medicine looking at the gut and oral microbiome of people with Parkinson’s disease. The study offers intriguing new insights that could help diagnose and monitor disease development and progression earlier.

“To our knowledge, this is the largest single study to test the relationships between both the oral and gut microbiomes and Parkinson’s disease, providing us with the statistical power to uncover potentially important associations,” said Keaton Stagaman, PhD, a postdoctoral research scientist at 23andMe and a co-author of the study.

Gut-Brain Axis

Parkinson’s is a neurodegenerative disorder that affects movement and cognitive function. Research has found a strong ‘gut-brain axis’ that connects the central nervous system to the gastrointestinal tract, and studies have recently pointed to the potential link between Parkinson’s disease and the gut microbiome.

Along with Parkinson’s, changes in the gut microbiome have been linked to other conditions, including inflammatory bowel disease, Clostridium difficile infections, autoimmune disorders, diabetes, and obesity. The links are intriguing but not yet fully understood. That said, a better understanding of the microbiome and its role could be essential for diagnosing and treating many conditions.

The new research by 23andMe offers more evidence of the connection between Parkinson’s and changes in the gut microbiome.

Different Types of Microorganisms

For this study, scientists used microbiome data from saliva and stool samples of people with and without Parkinson’s disease.

Scientists have identified about 1,000 microbial species in the human mouth, whereas the human gut has the densest collection of microorganisms in the body. According to the National Institutes of Health, the large intestine has as many as 100 billion to one trillion cells per milliliter and is among the densest microbial ecosystems ever observed.

Because of the vast number of different microorganisms, 23andMe scientists in this research used sequence data to group those organisms into Operational Taxonomic Units or closely related types of bacteria. Using these groupings, the scientists were able to find significant differences in the type and abundance of microorganisms in the microbiome of people with Parkinson’s when compared to those without the disease.

This was the case in both stool and saliva samples. This is significant and suggests that using saliva samples, which are much simpler for patients and scientists to collect, is adequate for detecting differences in the microbiome for those with Parkinson’s.

The Findings

In undertaking the study, the researchers thought there might be distinct microbial changes in people with Parkinson’s and that those changes could be seen in the early stages of the disease before many symptoms develop.

Among the signature differences researchers found was a higher diversity of microbes within the microbiome of those with Parkinson’s. This was the case even when considering other things that could affect the diversity of microbes, such as oral hygiene or constipation. In addition, the researchers said that the amount and diversity of microbes in samples was a good predictor of whether someone had Parkinson’s disease. Using a well-known machine learning algorithm called Random Forest, the team could predict whether a person had Parkinson’s or not 80 percent of the time.

The researchers also identified specific types of bacteria that differed between people with Parkinson’s and those who did not have the disease. The scientists believe that the findings might help find specific markers in the microbiome, specifically in saliva samples, that could be used to monitor for early signs of the disease.

Other studies have shown that changes in the gut microbiome may offer early indications of the onset of changes in a person’s motor functions.

Learn More

Beyond the ability to use a person’s microbiome to evaluate the status of Parkinson’s, the paper also suggests that altering a person’s microbiome may offer another avenue for treating Parkinson’s symptoms.

You can read the complete study in Communications Medicine here.

Additionally, data from the Fox Insight PD Microbiome sub-study are available to qualified researchers here.

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