Genetic Testing … Revealing, Perhaps Too Revealing :-)

Personal genetic testing… sounds like something from a dystopian science fiction novel doesn’t it? It would be pretty difficult not to have noticed that individuals can now have an analysis of their own DNA conducted by a variety of firms offering the service. The two most popular are 23andMe  and ancestryDNA.

The difference between the two is that ancestryDNA will tell you, to overly simplify it, where and who you’re from, while 23andMe will provide you with that same information, and if you choose, information about any potential health risks you might have. Interesting stuff, but there are more substantive differences between the two. I will let you explore those on your own.

So yes, I have had my DNA analyzed, and now know lots more about myself that I didn’t necessarily know before. I probably wouldn’t be writing about it, would I, if I hadn’t done it. For the record, I used the 23andMe service. It was a gift.

My DNA Journey Begins

Last fall and winter, as I was hovering near death and mostly unconscious in the ICU at our local hospital, family and friends gathered at my bedside and celebrated Christmas. I was oblivious to the fact, but I appreciate the sentiment. It should be noted that shortly before Christmas, the hospital staff were able to take me off the ventilator and my condition began to steadily dramatically. The doctors and nurses declared it to be a “Christmas miracle”? I’ll let you debate the merits of that statement. But I digress.

Much later in the game, as I was well down the path to recovery I noticed, much to my amusement, that I actually hadn’t received any Christmas gifts. I was certainly more amused than disappointed. The Love-goddess, being of Scottish descent (maybe there is something to this genetic stuff… tee-hee), certainly wasn’t going to spend any of her hard-earned money on something that I wouldn’t be able to use or enjoy for quite some time. And seriously, why would anyone else buy a gift for someone who may or may not be around to enjoy it? LOL! Yes, I do have a wonderful, dark sense of humour… thanks for noticing.

All of that notwithstanding, I did in fact receive one lovely Christmas gift. This was from my best friend the “Man-Who-Must-Not-Appear-On-Facebook” and, his partner in crime “Laurie-Anne-the-Magnificent”. You guessed it, all wrapped up for me when I arrived home from hospital in March, was the 23andMe testing kit.

The Process

I can only speak to the 23andMe testing process, but I imagine that the AncestryDNA method would function in a similar manner. You pay the nice folks involved, and they mail you a test kit, which you use in the privacy of your own home. The 23andMe kit provides you with a container into which you collect your own saliva (spit). You seal up your sample and mail it off to them in the prepaid mailing box included. You register with them online, and a few weeks later they notify you via email that your testing information is now available to you online. Easy-Peasy.

Types of Information Provided

The reports that I was able to access covered a wide range of subject areas. First and foremost, it provided information about my “Ancestry”, the where and who you are from. Other reports provided included, 1) “Health”, any potential future health risks related to your DNA, 2) “DNA Relatives”, people who you are genetically connected with and with whom you are provided the ability to communicate with, 3) “Your Connections“, people you go on to be directly communicating with in your DNA group, 4) your own “Family Tree” which you primarily fill in yourself, and 5) my personal favourite “Traits”, the genetics behind our appearance and senses.

There are other areas of information provided, but these are the ones that I paid most attention to and tell people about. I would surmise that AncestryDNA would provide similar information, less the Health facts of course.

This is how all of that broke down for me.

Ancestry – Out of Africa
The 23andMe reporting of your ancestry provides an interesting overview of ones’ ancestral history. It goes right back to begin with your beginning… the matrilineal “Haplogroup” lineage that goes right back to a single woman in Europe 10,000 years ago, Haplogroup V, and even further back to a single woman in Africa, Haplogroup L. As reported to me:

“Haplogroup L – If every person living today could trace his or her maternal line back over thousands of generations, all of our lines would meet at a single woman who lived in eastern Africa between 150,000 and 200,000 years ago. Though she was one of perhaps thousands of women alive at the time, only the diverse branches of her haplogroup have survived to today. The story of your maternal line begins with her.”

All very interesting of course, but not terribly practical when it comes to identifying where you and your family members are from most recently.

Ancestry – Neanderthal
Even less practical perhaps is that they identify what portion of your DNA is rooted in Neanderthal ancestry. Apparently, less than 2% of my DNA is rooted in Neanderthal DNA, and I have more Neanderthal DNA than only 32% of their customers. When I have looked in the mirror over the years I have always assumed that my DNA proportion that is Neanderthal would be quite substantial… given the heavy brow and all.  Apparently not.

I say perhaps less practical, but recent media reports have pointed to a very relevant connection to our Neanderthal DNA. Both CTV news, and The Guardian online newspaper… amongst other media outlets I am sure… reported as I was writing this that there may be a connection between our Neanderthal DNA and whether or not we will have severe COVID symptoms should we contact the virus.

Ancestry – Where and Who I Am From
Getting down to more recent and interesting information, according to the nice folks at 23andMe my genetic background is 100% European. To break it down even further I am 66% Irish and British, 12.9% French and German, 2% Scandinavian (Viking pillaging I am assuming), and a small mixture of several other groups including 0.1% Ashkenazi Jewish.

I mentioned the Jewish part because I had a FaceTime chat with a buddy in Ottawa recently, and he pointed out that it was Yom Kippur and he was spending the day in quiet personal reflection and atoning for personal transgressions. This caused me to point out my Jewish heritage. A discussion ensued about how much time I should be spending that day on personal atonement. My thought was that it should probably go on for several days and could not be fully covered on Yom Kippur.  But, I digress again.

Interestingly, they go on to break down the geographic distribution into individual counties in Republic of Ireland and cities in the United Kingdom In Ireland, I am most strongly connected to other folks in the counties of Donegal and Mayo. In the UK, I am most directly connected to individuals in the cities of Belfast, Glasgow and London. This makes preeminent sense. My family on my father’s side are from Ireland and Scotland, while on my mother’s side, from England. No major surprises for me, as 23andMe and AncestryDNA’s marketing alludes will occasionally happen.

Health – Variant Detection and Risk
Fortunately, I suppose, the health report with which I was provided wasn’t terribly attention grabbing. The following are the specific areas in which they discovered a medical condition connection and reported on how likely they could become a health issue for me.

Age-Related Macular Degeneration – variant detected, not likely at increased risk
Celiac Disease – slightly increased risk
Hereditary Hemochromatosis (HFE-Related) – variant detected, not likely at increased risk
Late-Onset Alzheimer’s Disease – slightly increased risk

So, not a whole lot to worry about there. I guess. I would like to know what other levels of descriptors they use to label risk however. Perhaps “slightly increased risk” is the DEFCON-5 level and I’m living on borrowed time.

I’m not sure how useful these statements are, but at least I am now aware that, genetically speaking, I am somewhat at risk for some of these things. It doesn’t say anything about my current health, but that is not what they purport to do. I’m going to put this away in the useful information category, but not currently relevant.

Traits – Physical, Senses, Weirdness
The “Traits” report was the one I absolutely enjoyed reading through the most. They break this one down into three subsections, “Physical Features”, “Taste and Smell”, and “Weird and Wonderful”.

Without worrying too much about which of these three subsections each of the following attributes were listed under, here are my absolute favorites – mostly because they provided some wonderful laughs at my own expense.

“Ability to Match Musical Pitch” – Apparently, I only stand “about a 50/50 chance of being able to match a musical pitch.” Now that is just mean spirited and hurtful. I love music. I always have and I always will. That said, I am the worst singer that I know. I have zero talent or ability in this area. And that is probably a good thing. If I had been able to sing like Andrea Bocelli and play the guitar like Eric Clapton, I am sure I would’ve been dead before the ripe old age of 29, like Jimi, Janis, Jim, Kurt, and Amy, from the excesses of rock ‘n’ roll.

“Fear of Heights” – “More likely than average to be afraid of heights”
True enough, and damn proud of it. A few short years ago the Love-goddess and I were away on a couples’ weekend and someone asked the question “which NHL player are you related to”? My now good friend, “B.”, and I both replied Rick McLeish. We had never met before. As it turns out my grandmother and his great grandfather were both MacLeish’s and brother and sister. We are second cousins once removed… and genetically connected.

The germane part of this story as connected to the fear of heights discussion, is that we also discovered that we were both so afraid of heights that our wives had to drive us over high scary bridges. There may well be something to this genetic thing.

“Fear of Public Speaking” – “Less Likely to have a fear of public speaking”
Again, very accurate. I remember being nervous the first few times I had to do this, but after I got the hang of it, no problem. If you ask any of my friends who have known me a long time, they will tell you that I am absolutely the last person you want to offer a live microphone to in front of a captive audience. I was once “yellow carded” by a funeral director for going on too long during my eulogy of a friend.

“Wake Up Time” – “Likely to wake up around 6:44 AM”
Not 6:45 AM, but 6:44 AM. What? Do you people have a video camera set up inside my house? That is very close to the time that I normally wake up in the morning, just before I “leap” out of bed at 7:00 AM.

“Early Hair Loss” – There is a “70% chance you will experience hair loss or thinning before age 40.” That one I knew already. Good to know it was rooted in my genetic make-up rather than in poor eating habits, or shabby personal grooming. Now that the Love-goddess clips my hair down to the wood once a week I am proud to say that I am no longer cursed with hair.

“Eye Colour” – My genetics predict a 73% chance of having blue or greenish blue eyes.
Again, does 23andMe have a camera or two located somewhere in my house?

And on it went. They identified 37 different traits that were likely to be impacted by my genetic make-up. All of which I would consider to be fun or interesting statements about how I came to be me. Good stuff!

Unknown Relatives & Other Mysteries

The other benefit, or hazard I suppose, is the chance that some genetic history about you will be uncovered that changes who you thought you were or where you came from. As I said, they do tend to allude to this in some of their marketing.

No surprises for me so far, but… I was going to tell you the story of an experience a friend of mine had but he reminded me of the Tom Wilson story, which is way more interesting.

Tom Wilson is a Canadian singer-songwriter from Hamilton, Ontario.  I have seen Tom perform many times over the years, and love his music. You might know him as a member of Blackie and the Rodeo Kings. Tom recently published his autobiography, entitled “Beautiful Scars”.  The book primarily deals with his discovery of who he really was and where he was really from, shattering his lifelong understanding of who he thought he was and where he was from.

Basically, Tom discovered that the nice folks whom he thought were his parents were, in fact, his “adoptive” parents. What makes this interesting is that he did not discover this until he was well into his 50s. It turned out that his mother’s much younger friend was actually Tom’s mother. He had known this woman his entire life and have never connected the dots, even though he was aware he looked nothing like his parents. Further, he learned that he was Mohawk, historically rooted in the indigenous genealogy of North America, and not the European one as he had assumed.

Life-changing for sure. But the story did not end there. His biological mother informed him that his father was a Mohawk steelworker who had lived and worked in New York City. Let’s call him “Man-W”. At the age of 18, she had run off to join him there, only to discover that he was already married. She left him and went back home where she later discovered that she was pregnant. After Tom was born, she gave him up to the Wilsons to raise.

And then his story got even more interesting. After discovering his actual biological history, a friend suggested to him that he use the service 23andMe to help him identify any posible family related health issues. He had no idea what sort of health problems his biological father… who was now deceased… may have had, so he saw this as a worthy suggestion and went through with the procedure.

Having done so, he saw how he was genetically connected with many other Native American people throughout North America. To his surprise a Mohawk woman living in Montreal contacted him through the 23andMe service and indicated that she thought he might be her grandfather. He knew he was too young to be that individual and let her know.

The next day she contacted him again and said that she now believed him to be her half-brother. She asked, if her father, “Man-B”, might be his father as well? He told her no, but when he spoke to his biological mother about “Man-B” she reported “I knew (Man-B) …. In fact I dated (Man-B) a few weeks before I met your father” The two of them quickly deduced that he was in fact Tom’s actual father. What a great story. You should read it.

Catching Criminals

The other useful application of all the genetic testing that is being undertaken by individuals is that it is helping police catch criminals who committed crimes over the years and who had left traces of DNA evidence at their crime scenes. The most famous of these was the recent arrest of the Golden State Killer. He had gone on a decades-long killing spree, and was never caught – until, DNA information that had been voluntarily uploaded by individuals from sites like 23andMe and ancestryDNA to a public DNA database (GEDmatch) used by police ultimately led to his arrest. You can read about it in this NBC news report. Second-hand DNA evidence has led to the solving of several other crimes, and will likely continue do so for years to come.

Which Service to Use

If you are interested in following this up, and are considering having your own DNA analyzed by one of these firms, you might want to do a little comparison shopping between the two I have identified, and any others that are out there (e.g. “TellmeGen” on the amazon.ca site). I suppose the place to begin is with price.

The 23andMe kit that provides the “full monty” bundle, ancestry + health + traits, currently costs $250. The alternative, AncestryDNA without the health function, but including the ancestry + traits costs $129. These were the prices stated on both the 23andMe and amazon.ca websites when I checked as I wrote this. The 23andMe kits do go on sale from time to time, so it would make sense to monitor both the Amazon and23andMe sites if you are looking to buy at a discounted rate. Ancestry does appear to offer a health and traits kit on their US site, but it does not look like it is available in Canada. It is currently priced at $119 US… normally $179 US. Bottom line, these things are not cheap.

You can explore other firm’s kits on amazon.ca or other sites if you are looking for additional options. When I searched for reviews, I came across one article that looked at different offerings and ranked them. Here is a link to the site.

There you have it. An all new way to look at yourself. And, a bit of a fun thing for we retired folks to explore as we head into the, probably-activity-restricted, winter.

Have “a nice DNA”… ooooh, that was corny. My apologies.