Ancestry Composition/23 and Me

[mixedkid]

I was just wondering what the general consensus was out there about 23 and Me's Ancestry Composition. Does that company rely heavily on the self-reports of early testers or is it using public data bases of reference populations?

I have taken Family Finder, the automsomal test with Ancestry and now the test with 23 and Me. Ancestry has come the closest to my basic, known regional ancestral mix. Family Finder cousins report backgrounds (and surnames) that also parallel the backgrounds of my parents and me (I often share matches with either my mother or father -- many of our Family Finder matches live in Europe.)

So far, I do like 23 and Me's health-related information.

[vinnie]

I know that they're using self-reports of customers who indicate all four grandparents coming from the same group. They used my info, and I'm still waiting for my real AC report since the use of my data ironically caused my report to be inaccurate.

[NYMark]

23andMe is using both. My general impression is that it is the best in the bunch, That's certainly the view in some of the forums I use, and it seems to be largely so in my case.

Both 23andMe and Ancestry are very close and accurate in terms of their estimate of my Ashkenazi Jewish admixture: 49% on Ancestry versus 49.4 in standard and 50.4 in Speculative on 23andMe; however I have numerous Ancestry matches with up to 75% Ashkenazi (based on their trees) who show none at all. Even allowing for the unreliability of many trees on Ancestry, these examples are too numerous and the apparent AJ ancestry too substantial for me to think Ancestry can be relied on.

I have another match who has a very extensive tree that's almost entirely British Isles. Ancestry has him at 86% Jewish. Even if he were the first generation product of an NPE, the percentage would be way off base. The only possibility would be a secret adoption. I haven't suggested that possibility, and it's not impossible, but still. . .

Ancestry and 23andMe are very much at odds when it comes to my non-AJ side. Ancestry has it as overwhelmingly British Isles, where 23andMe has it as overwhelmingly German French, with very small percentages of other European, including a very modest Isles component, in Speculative Mode only. While my paternal line is unknown, my closest matches are Swiss, which falls into German French on 23andMe.

If anything, I think Ancestry relies more heavily on self-reporting than 23andMe, although I'm not sure. Bottom line is, IMO, Ancestry is sporadically accurate but is essentially unreliable. Conversely, there are some issues on 23andMe, mostly related to people who answered questionnaires and became part of a reference population. Others are not affected by that issue. I think Ancestry has used similar methods, although I'm not sure about that.

I was just wondering what the general consensus was out there about 23 and Me's Ancestry Composition. Does that company rely heavily on the self-reports of early testers or is it using public data bases of reference populations?

I have taken Family Finder, the automsomal test with Ancestry and now the test with 23 and Me. Ancestry has come the closest to my basic, known regional ancestral mix. Family Finder cousins report backgrounds (and surnames) that also parallel the backgrounds of my parents and me (I often share matches with either my mother or father -- many of our Family Finder matches live in Europe.)

So far, I do like 23 and Me's health-related information.

[MFWare]

I was just wondering what the general consensus was out there about 23 and Me's Ancestry Composition. ...

As you know, you are not in any way limited to 23andMe's Ancestry Composition for your genetic admixture. You may post your genome to GEDmatch.com where you may run the various admixture models available there.

[Táltos]

mixedkid I'm new to 23 myself. Lately I've been just reading through some of their forums. I noticed that they have a thread just started at the beginning of the year in regard to their Ancestry Composition. This thread is in regard to Italian being a surrogate for someone with Near Eastern or Middle Eastern ancestry.

Go figure! And here at FTDNA there is always "controversy" surrounding someone's Middle Eastern Results! Sigh....you can't win.

[JTR]

As you know, you are not in any way limited to 23andMe's Ancestry Composition for your genetic admixture. You may post your genome to GEDmatch.com where you may run the various admixture models available there.

Yeah, on a number of different GEDmatch Admixture tools I show up as Ashkenazi, middle eastern, etc. So it does seem that 23&me got my Ashkenazi right and not just because of the self-reporting. Now to see if I can find and confirm that by finding the person/s?

[mixedkid]

Thank you for all of your thought out answers.

I am still learning to maneuver around the 23 and Me site. As far as my ancestry composition goes, the basic world map indicates Europe, eastern Asia and most of the New World south of the U.S-Canada border. Having some Scandinavian background, I was rather surprised that apparently, no Siberian reference populations are used by 23 and Me. (On GEDmatch, Siberian segments come up a lot, using the various calculators -- for me, my mother and Scandinavian-related distant cousins.)

Any big surprises? Yes, the small eastern Asia (really southeast Asia, according to the map) component. There was some indication of that using GEDmach but I fully did not expect to see that on the 23 and Me results.

Verifications of anything? One thing: I have a small southern European percentage (I think it is around 4%). That did not surprise me. My mother, especially, has been picking up Iberian segments through the GEDmatch calculators. Using the various oracle tools on that site, Portuguese (and Brazilian) and northern Italian come up periodically as well.

I think overall if 23 and Me would get some Siberian reference population data it would improve ancestral compositions for customers -- especially if those customers have some known Scandinavian or Nordic ancestry. Use of North American Arctic people as reference populations would also help.

[MMaddi]

I think overall if 23 and Me would get some Siberian reference population data it would improve ancestral compositions for customers -- especially if those customers have some known Scandinavian or Nordic ancestry. Use of North American Arctic people as reference populations would also help.

Ancestry Composition at 23andMe is specifically designed to indicate ethnic/geographic admixture in the last 500 years. Correct me if I'm wrong, but any Siberian ancestry in someone with known Scandinavian ancestry would probably be deep ancestry, more than 500 years ago.

They do include Finnish among their reference populations, which is made up of 188 of their customers with all 4 grandparents from Finland and 93 from scientific studies. I would think that any Siberian showing up in people with Scandinavian ancestry would be mediated by showing up as a small amount of Finnish. Do you have any percentage showing up as Finnish in your Ancestry Composition?

[mixedkid]

Finnish

Maddi,

I am glad you mentioned the Finns. Here is what I have related to that population:

FTDNA -- no official designation but many Finnish/Mixed Finnish matches (even more for my mother). Most live in Finland.

Ancestry -- 10% Finnish/Volga/Ural, about 14 Finnish matches

23 and Me -- Finnish is listed under Northern European at 3.9%; Scandinavian is 9.1%. I have a relatively large percentage of Northern European that is undetermined.

As far as GEDmatch goes, I concentrated on those calculators which refer in some way to the Finns. (I know there is at least one developed for Swedish people to determine any Finnish heritage, but I forgot which one it is.). From the MDLP Project calculators:

K=8, Volga Finnic at 3.44%
K=9, Volga Finnic at 3.43%
K=10, Volga Finnic at 3.30%
K=11, 2.84% Volga Uralic (no mention specifically of the Finns)

Using K=8, I looked at the percentages for individual chromosomes. Higher percentages run anywhere from 2.9 - 9.9 for Volga Finnic.

We have suspected Finnish ancestry on my mother's side of the family for years now. A few years ago, quite by chance, I gave a distant cousin here a ride to work. She told me that our mutual ancestors included both Swedes and Finns. (Many of our not so distant mutual relatives are buried in the cemetery here.) Only a few months ago, I learned from a first cousin on my dad's side of the family that Finnish people might be in that family's tree. My mother's grandmother immigrated from Sweden. Two of my father's great-grandparents were from southern Norway. My mother is 85; my dad is 84. My father has only recently started to pick up Finnish matches through Family Finder, but never as close cousins as my mother or I get. One of my autosomal Finnish distant cousins (also a cousin to my mother) is a mitochondrial match to my dad.

[NYMark]

A footnote regarding the Scandinavian, 23andMe gives me a 1.2-1.4% and Ancestry none (although it does have me at 6% Finnish/Volga/Ural.) I have some distant (5-<7 cM) Finnish and Swedish matches on phased segments. I suspect Ancestry's 6% is high.

Many people have complained about Ancestry grossly overestimating their Scandinavian.

None of these tools is perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but based on what I've read on various sites, Ancestry seems to be the most erratic, sometimes pretty good but too frequently wildly wrong.

Thank you for all of your thought out answers.

I am still learning to maneuver around the 23 and Me site. As far as my ancestry composition goes, the basic world map indicates Europe, eastern Asia and most of the New World south of the U.S-Canada border. Having some Scandinavian background, I was rather surprised that apparently, no Siberian reference populations are used by 23 and Me. (On GEDmatch, Siberian segments come up a lot, using the various calculators -- for me, my mother and Scandinavian-related distant cousins.)

Any big surprises? Yes, the small eastern Asia (really southeast Asia, according to the map) component. There was some indication of that using GEDmach but I fully did not expect to see that on the 23 and Me results.

Verifications of anything? One thing: I have a small southern European percentage (I think it is around 4%). That did not surprise me. My mother, especially, has been picking up Iberian segments through the GEDmatch calculators. Using the various oracle tools on that site, Portuguese (and Brazilian) and northern Italian come up periodically as well.

I think overall if 23 and Me would get some Siberian reference population data it would improve ancestral compositions for customers -- especially if those customers have some known Scandinavian or Nordic ancestry. Use of North American Arctic people as reference populations would also help.

[mixedkid]

Mark, I too questioned my Scandinavian percentage at Ancestry. I knew about my Norwegian and Swedish background but could not figure how nearly a third of my genes could be attributed to the those nationalities! I do know though that Norman ancestry is apparently on both my father's French-Canadian branch as well as my mother's British branch. Judging from the number of my dad's French ancestors from Normandy and environs, some of my Scandinavian percentage must come from [Danish?] Vikings who settled in that former French coastal province.

I question some of my German ancestry as well. My mother and I have both added a Danish match to our distant cousin lists lately. Perhaps what has been labeled "German", culturally and native language-wise is actually Viking/Scandinavian genetically, at least in part of our family tree.

[GenieLogical]

I question AncestryDNA admixture results for me. My mother is 1/4 Swedish and 1/4 norwegian. I have many Norwegian matches on 23andMe and ftDNA. I also have many German matches on my Dad's side. However, Ancestry says my admixture is 0% Scandinavian 0% Germanic. They only assign me to British Isles and Southern Europe. And, some of my Ancestry matches indicate 70% Scandinavian, but there are no Scandinavian matches in any of the 5 generations of my matches relatives. All the other admixture algorithms include at least a 17% of Scandinavian for me.
GenieLogical h3ah