In 2009, we added six tools to 23andMe Labs, our technology sandbox where we showcase experimental features. In case you haven’t played around with them yet, here’s a brief review:

Health Labs

Reynolds Risk Score
This tool calculates a 10-year risk for heart-attack using information including cholesterol and blood pressure.

ABO Blood Type
There actually are more than 25 different blood groups that go into determining your particular “type,” but you’re probably most familiar with the blood group determined by the ABO gene. This is the gene that determines whether you will be type O, A, B, or AB.

Genetic Weight Calculator
See how much of your weight you can blame on your genes (not your jeans)!

Ancestry Labs

Haplogroup Tree Mutation MapperThis feature shows you which particular mutations in a person’s mitochondrial DNA (maternal ancestry) or Y chromosome (paternal ancestry) were used to determine their haplogroup assignment.

Family Inheritance: Advanced
Compare your DNA, bit by bit, to see what segments you share with close and distant family.

Native American Ancestry Finder
Search for evidence of Native American ancestry in a person’s genome.

Customers who have purchased the Complete Edition of our service have access to both Health and Ancestry Labs. Customers with either the Health or Ancestry Editions of 23andMe have access only to the Labs relevant to the data they have received.

The point of Labs is to let you, our customers, play around with cutting-edge tools while our scientists are still developing them.  What can we say?  We’re super excited about genetics and we love to share!  Each Lab has its own community so you can compare notes, ask questions and share ideas.  We love to hear your ideas and comments!

But please remember, Labs are a free feature that is not part of our regular service.  Some labs require specialized knowledge or may be of interest only to a subset of our customers. Because they’re still in development, you can expect labs to be a little less refined than our regular product, and somewhat fluid as well. All of them are still in beta.  A feature could be discontinued at any time, or it might be elevated to full integration with our Personal Genome Service.

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Every family has its legends. Maybe it’s a story about how they’re descended from a passenger on the Mayflower, a Confederate soldier or Charlemagne.

Of all the classic American family legends, stories of a Native American ancestor are among of the most common. Many times there’s a well-documented link to a Native forbear: Two First Ladies (Edith Wilson and Nancy Reagan) and one Duchess of Windsor (Wallis Simpson) are proven descendants of Pocahontas.

Other times, the evidence amounts to little more than vague tales about a rugged pioneer and a Cherokee princess. (Learn what’s wrong with that scenario here.)

Now 23andMe customers who are curious about whether they may have Native American ancestors can look for evidence of it in their genes. The Native American Ancestry Finder uses some existing 23andMe features — Ancestry Painting, Maternal Line and Paternal Line — to look for genetic signatures that are likely to have come from a Native American ancestor.

The Maternal Line and Paternal Line elements of the Finder are pretty straightforward; certain mitochondrial DNA (maternal) and Y chromosome (paternal) haplogroups are often found among Native Americans. These include mitochondrial haplogroups A2, B2, C1, D1 and X2a — which are found exclusively among Native Americans. People in some other branches of the A, B, C and D haplogroups may also have Native American ancestry, but their maternal lines could also trace to Asia. On the paternal side, only Q3 is exclusive to Native Americans, though anyone with a Y chromosome in the C, C3 or Q haplogroup could conceivably have Native American forbears.

A Native American’s Ancestry Painting.

The part of the Finder that uses Ancestry Painting to find evidence for Native American forbears is a little more complicated. It relies on the fact that people of full Native American descent have Ancestry Paintings that are consistently about 75% orange (Asian) and 25% blue (European). This is due to the fact that Native Americans are ultimately descended from populations that lived in northern and central Asia about 15,000 to 20,000 years ago, and the fact that those regions are intermediate between the reference populations that Ancestry Painting classifies as fully Asian (Japanese and Chinese) and fully European (European-Americans living in Utah).

Then the Finder compares your Ancestry Painting proportions to a table that contains the results of an extensive series of simulations that we performed to determine what would happen to that three-to-one Asian/European proportion over the generations if a Native American and a partner of all-European descent had a child who then reproduced with another all-European partner, and so on. We did the same analysis for a Native American marrying into an all-Asian pedigree. Unfortunately, partly due to inadequate sampling of Africa’s genetic diversity, this method cannot yet establish Native American ancestry for African Americans.

We found that it takes at least five generations after the appearance of a single Native American in an otherwise all- European pedigree for the percentage of Asian (orange) DNA to reach zero. In an otherwise all-Asian pedigree that process is much faster — in two generations, the grandchild of that single Native American can have no trace of European in his or her Ancestry Painting.

There are, of course, plenty of Eurasian populations that also have blue-and-orange Ancestry Paintings. So the Native American Ancestry Finder performs a second analysis that can distinguish people of South Asian, Central Asian, Middle Eastern and Ashkenazi descent from those with Native American ancestry. Unfortunately, there is still some uncertainty when it comes to distinguishing people with Native American ancestry.

It’s still a work in progress — that’s what Labs are all about. But we hope customers will help us by trying out the Native American Ancestry Finder and letting us know if anything doesn’t mesh with what they know about their genealogy. You can also contribute by taking the “Where Are You From?” survey in 23andWe.

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