Jun
27
2008
This month I had the opportunity to go to the Society of Molecular Biology and Evolution conference in the striking city of Barcelona. This is the premiere conference for geneticists studying evolution in everything from bacteria to fruit flies, weeds, worms and our favorite model organism, humans! This is a highly interactive conference: almost everyone [...]
Tags: ancestry, evolution, Jimmy Buffet, maternal ancestry, mtDNA, Stone Age
Jun
20
2008
What can we learn from studying how variations of human genes are spread out around the world?
A lot, said population geneticist and Harvard junior fellow Sohini Ramachandran, who spoke at 23andMe this week.
Ramachandran focused on how genes spread from one continent to another, and how they vary within each region as well.
As an example, she [...]
Tags: 23andMe, ancestry, Jared Diamond, migration, Sohini Ramachandran
Jun
13
2008
Roy King is a clinical psychiatrist at Stanford University. He’s also a scholar who uses genetics and archaeology to figure out how agriculture spread through Anatolia and the Mediterranean region of Europe more than 10,000 years ago.
Now Roy has another genetic puzzle to consider – himself. With the help of 23andMe, he can now see [...]
Tags: 23andMe, ancestry, ancestry painting
May
07
2008
One of the most exciting parts of 23andMe’s Personal Genome Service™ is discovering your genetic ancestry. Suddenly your family tree has branches that reach back thousands of years into the prehistoric past.
At present, 23andMe customers can trace two branches of their genetic family tree – one that follows the all-female line on the maternal side [...]
Tags: ancestry, paternal ancestry, Y-chromosome
Mar
25
2008
It was not very long ago – at least in evolutionary terms – that humans first ventured beyond the continent of their species’ birth. But once people did begin migrating out of Africa about 50,000 years ago to populate the lands we now call the Middle East, Asia, Europe and the Americas, the transformation of [...]
Tags: 23andMe, ancestry, ancestry painting