How to Read My Ancestry Dna Results
Remember when you got your AncestryDNA® test results? Y'all likely recall the anticipation, the excitement of what you might discover—and the fun of sharing your ethnicity estimate results with family.
Just what people oft don't realize is how much information is independent in their ethnicity guess. An ethnicity estimate actually has two major pieces of data—ethnicity regions and communities. Nosotros are going to talk nearly ethnicity regions hither.
Ethnicity regions are the most well-known role of the ethnicity gauge and come with percentages, like 25% Sweden or 10% Ivory Coast & Ghana.
They are really broad; they often encompass one or more mod day countries. And they ofttimes achieve back more than twenty generations.
Communities are the 2d piece of your AncestryDNA ethnicity approximate. Unlike ethnicity regions, communities are not assigned percentages. What they are is more than precise areas of the world, to give you a more granular understanding of where your ancestors came from (sometimes downward to the region of a country or fifty-fifty a county). And they're also from the more than contempo past, nearly 5-20 generations agone.
Here we are going to focus on the ethnicity regions.
How does AncestryDNA assign ethnicity regions in your ethnicity guess?
Assigning ethnicity regions based on your Deoxyribonucleic acid sample is a circuitous process based on probability, statistics, shared DNA, and ongoing research and scientific discipline.
Outset our scientists create a reference panel, which is made upwardly of reference groups. Each reference group has the Deoxyribonucleic acid of people whose family lived in a sure part of the world for many generations.
And each reference grouping represents an ethnicity region.
Every bit of 2020, there were 70 reference groups in the AncestryDNA reference panel.
When a customer takes an AncestryDNA exam, our scientists compare their DNA, slice by piece, to see which reference group each piece of that customer'southward Dna well-nigh closely resembles. The ethnicities assigned to each piece of DNA are and then totaled upwardly and the percentages are calculated. If 15% of the Dna pieces analyzed await nearly similar the France reference group, and so the customer gets 15% France in their ethnicity approximate.
AncestryDNA continues to add samples and update its reference groups to improve precision and include additional ethnicity regions in AncestryDNA test results. Additionally, AncestryDNA tin update the way information technology analyzes your DNA.
The updating of reference groups and the way the DNA is analyzed means that over time, your results may exist updated as well.
Snip, SNP
Here's a simplified example of how the AncestryDNA algorithm assigns ethnicity regions. The algorithm looks at nigh 700,000 markers in your Dna sample. Those markers are called SNPs (pronounced snips). Each SNP refers to a certain position in human DNA. And each SNP is made upward of a pair of messages representing some combination of A, T, C, or Chiliad. Let'due south say that at SNP rs122 there are two possibilities: A and T. Considering y'all go one alphabetic character (or allele) from each parent, you tin can have an AA, AT, or TT.
Each possible outcome at each SNP has a probability for how likely it is to show up in each region represented by the reference panel. We'll pretend that rs122 occurs in three populations—Indigenous Americas—United mexican states, Sweden, and Scotland—at the post-obit frequencies:
A = appears 5% of the time in Indigenous Americas—United mexican states populations, 75% in Swedish populations, and lxxx% in Scottish populations.
T = appears 95% of the time in Indigenous Americas—Mexico populations, 25% in Swedish populations, and xx% in Scottish populations.
So, if you have AA at rs122, it seems that that specific part of your Deoxyribonucleic acid is more than probable to be Swedish than Indigenous Americas—Mexico. If your Deoxyribonucleic acid reads TT, the opposite seems more than probable. One SNP doesn't tell united states much virtually your ethnicity, but when we apply the aforementioned process to thousands of SNPs, and then do the math, the grand total becomes the ground for your ethnicity estimate.
Why practise ethnicity estimate percentages have a range and how is it determined?
In addition to the most likely approximate, our algorithm also generates 1,000 probable estimates using the probabilities learned from comparing your genetic information to our reference panel.
Nosotros use these 1,000 probable estimates—which may be dissimilar from the most likely estimate—to figure out the range. The way we calculate the range volition depend on the region and the value of the most likely estimate.
Here'southward an example of an AncestryDNA ethnicity gauge for someone with strong ties to Europe and the Americas.
In the example above, between fifty% and 55% of this customer'due south DNA appears to friction match the Ancestry Indigenous Americas—Mexico reference panel, with an average per centum of 53%.
That 53% is the most likely number within a range of percentages that are also likely. Less probable, but not necessarily past much. To notice out your range of likely percentages, click on the ethnicity in your results that y'all are interested in.
These ranges are important to look at, especially for results with lower percentages. In these cases, the range can sometimes include zero. This means that for these results, it is possible that your ancestors didn't live in that region or you didn't inherit any DNA from ancestors who did.
But My Family Never Lived in [Your Mystery Region Here]
Hither is an example of someone with 7% Kingdom of norway in their results.
Only what if they've never heard of everyone in the family being from Norway? This is where the maps and the polygons on them tin aid. By clicking on Norway, the first thing that pops upwardly is a note that this ethnicity is found primarily in Norway, Iceland, and Faroe Islands. OK, then already there are new possible places the antecedent who passed this down might be from.
And a close await at the map shows that other places are possible too—for example, Denmark and parts of Sweden.
This all makes sense when y'all consider that Norwegians, Swedes, and Danes all share a common Norse heritage. For centuries, hunter-gatherers pushed northward across the Baltic Bounding main, probing coastal fjords and inland stretches for farmable country. By the 9th and 10th centuries Norwegian Vikings colonized the Faroe Islands, Republic of iceland, and Greenland (along with northern Scotland, the Orkneys, the Hebrides, and the Isle of man).
So, your ethnicity approximate can provide insight non only on where your ancestors might accept lived but also allow you to trace the path of your ancestors.
When Did All This Happen?
Your genetic ethnicity guess tells you lot about your possible historical origins, not necessarily about where you live today. AncestryDNA genetic ethnicity estimates become back hundreds to more than a thousand years, when populations and their boundaries were ofttimes very different. This might lead to a different genetic ethnicity estimate than yous might expect.
Merely while someone's language, name, or civilization may alter when they motility to a new location, their DNA doesn't. This tin lead to surprises in your genetic ethnicity. For example, if the ancestors of your Italian ancestors migrated from Eastern Europe hundreds of years ago, you might show up equally having Eastern European ethnicity instead of Italian.
The contrary can also happen. Deoxyribonucleic acid is passed downward randomly and the amount of Deoxyribonucleic acid you might inherit from any particular antecedent decreases with each generation. That means you tin can accept an ethnicity you know of in your family history that doesn't show up in your ethnicity estimate.
If you haven't looked at your ethnicity results in a while, go dorsum and give them another look. You're much more than than a pie chart and a scattering of percentages. And and then is your AncestryDNA ethnicity estimate.
Source: https://www.ancestry.com/lp/ethnicity-estimate/reading-your-ethnicity-estimate
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