For Christmas this year my family had a spitting contest. I don't remember who filled up their tube the fastest, but everyone finished, which was most important. About a year ago I did my own 23 and Me DNA test and I was curious to compare my results to my own parents and to my sister, Michelle. In addition, we also had Stacey participate so that we will be able to compare our children's results to both of ours in the future.
After several weeks we got our results back. There really weren't very many surprises. My parents results were what I expected and consistent with what I had assumed I inherited from each. However, for me there were a handful of very interesting things that came up as a result:
1) After the results were made available, I was able to add my parents to my profile. As soon as I linked their accounts, I received a message saying that my own results were being reanalyzed. This technology is continually changing, so I think now they had more tools available to them. However, what was probably the biggest cause of this reevaluation of my DNA was that with my parent's results they were able to better fine tune their assumptions and smoothing of the data. In other words, they were able to get a better picture of me with more data at their disposal. This resulted changes to my own results. Specifically, about 2% of British & Irish was reclassified as Scandinavian (thanks Mom!), and about 13% of my Broadly Northwestern European was reclassified as French/German (thanks Dad!). Although the numbers are close, this switched the largest grouping of mine to Scandinavian.
2) My Dad is very strong in British & Irish at over 50%. No real surprises there as that was assumed based on family genealogy and my own results.
3) My Mom is the purebred at 70% Scandinavian. That was completely expected due to the recent immigration from Norway on her side of the family.
4) Michelle is actually the same proportions as me. Almost exactly the same numbers for Scandinavian and British, with a slight edge to Scandinavian. One really interesting advances in this technology is that they are now able to tell what country within these regions your DNA came from. On her results it lists Norway, which is accurate. Soon these country specific results will be pushed out to all users, even for people like me who took the test a year ago.
5) Stacey is 35% French and German. This was expected, but what wasn't expected is that this was classified as being from Germany, even though her grandmother was from France. It was an interesting development and something that would be interesting to look into further. However, given the history of this region, people and territory have flipped back and forth numerous times. For example, her grandmother came from France but her ancestors could have moved there from Germany. Stacey was also 30% British. So, the fact that both of us have a sizable chunk of British probably means that this will show up when we do our kid's tests in the future. We already suspected this, as we all vaguely resemble Hobbits.
Our third Daddy Daughter Dance at the community center was yesterday. Julia loves going, so although I was feeling sick we still went and had a good time. I am not sure what her favorite part is, but getting a new dress and fancy shoes is definitely near the top. This year's theme was masquerade, so Julia decorated her own mask. Other than the mask, there was a station to make glitter slime. It was mostly about dancing this year. Fun!
