Faces of America is a four-part series in which Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. uses genealogy and genetics to explore the family histories of 12 renowned Americans in an effort to understand what made the United States the place it is today.

The final episode, “Know Thyself” airs this Wednesday (March 3) on PBS.  In this segment, DNA is used when the genealogical paper trails ends to give the participants an even deeper understanding of who they are and where they came from.

All of the participants who chose to learn about their genetics were analyzed using the 23andMe Ancestry Edition.  Our scientists Joanna Mountain and Brenna Henn (who make some cameo appearances!) helped with the analysis of the participants’ mitochondrial and Y chromosome haplogroups, global origins and ancestry paintings.

In addition to learning about their ancestors, Faces of America guests who choose to participate in our new Relative Finder feature will join the thousands of other people who now have the ability to find living relatives based on their DNA.

If you haven’t been watching this series, there’s still time to catch up on what well-known Americans Elizabeth Alexander, Mario Batali, Stephen Colbert, Louise Erdrich, Malcolm Gladwell, Eva Longoria, Yo-Yo Ma, Mike Nichols, Her Majesty Queen Noor, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Meryl Streep and Kristi Yamaguchi have learned about their family histories.  The first three episodes are all available online:

Episode 1: Our American Stories

Episode 2: Becoming American

Episode 3: Making America

Check your local listings for Faces of America here.

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The list of participants includes:

• Elizabeth Alexander, professor and poet
• Mario Batali, chef
• Stephen Colbert, comedian
• Louise Erdrich, novelist
• Malcolm Gladwell, journalist
• Eva Longoria, actress
• Yo-Yo Ma, musician
• Mike Nichols, director
• Her Majesty Queen Noor
• Dr. Mehmet Oz, television host/heart surgeon
• Meryl Streep, actress
• Kristi Yamaguchi, figure skater

Sneak peaks of each participant’s unique story are available on the Faces of America page at pbs.org.

All four episodes promise to be very interesting.  If you’re a fan of 23andMe, be sure to catch the episode featuring genetic ancestry analysis by our scientists on March 3.  Each participant was offered the same maternal and paternal ancestry and global origins information we give every Complete and Ancestry Edition customer.  And now that Relative Finder has had its official launch, these famous Americans can also use their DNA to connect with living cousins from all around the world.

Faces of America with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. premieres nationally Wednesdays, February 10 – March 3, 2010 from 8-9 p.m. ET on PBS.  Check your local listings here.  The first full-length episode will be available online on Thursday, February 11.

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Two years ago Stephen Colbert, host of the news-parody show, “The Colbert Report” coined the word “wikiality” to describe a reality defined by the majority.

“Nation, it’s time we used the power of our numbers for a real internet revolution,” Colbert told his audience. “Together we can create a reality that we can all agree on — the reality we just agreed on.”

Like Colbert, genetics researchers also hope Internet users will help realize their wiki vision — an online database with material sourced from the majority.

Earlier this month, Jon Huss III and his colleagues from San Diego State University, the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation and Washington University School of Medicine outlined their proposal to develop a gene wiki on Wikipedia.

In a PLoS Biology paper, the researchers described their plan to create an online resource filled with content that can be read by all audiences, from lay people to students to professionals. And unlike extant gene databases such as Entrez Gene in which large tracts of information are submitted and edited by a few experts, they said, the entries in this database would come from a projected vast pool of volunteer contributors.

(On a side note, the gene wiki isn’t alone in looking for talented contributors of information about genes. 23andMe is looking for a full-time scientific curator — someone who can, among other things, sift through journal papers and help identify genetic associations of interest. For further information, check out the job posting here.)

Huss and his colleagues aren’t the first to think of a gene wiki, but they are unusual in going against the top-down approach by laying a foundation on Wikipedia. By the time their paper was published, they’d created entry stubs for 7,500 genes such as ITK, and updated entries for another 650, including BRCA1.

“Because articles are dynamic and not subject to rigorous peer review, the gene wiki is not intended to be a reference that is cited in a traditional peer-reviewed article or used exclusively as a source of gene annotation,” the researchers wrote.

Huss and his colleagues hope to involve a number of people, each taking a little time to enter and edit these gene entries on Wikipedia. One obvious question is how long it’ll take people unfamiliar with the site to learn how to contribute. Early feedback suggests the process may not be as intuitive as expected, and notes that participation is key for this effort to succeed.

But the researchers’ plan to develop a gene database that can be accessed and edited by anyone at any time also brings up the same issue that has dogged Wikipedia over the years: accuracy.

Wikipedia’s everyman-as-editor policy has led to some high-profile controversies such as the Siegenthaler incident, in which a retired journalist was falsely described on Wikipedia as being involved in the Kennedy assassinations. There have also been cases of political staffers editing the entries for their bosses — and their bosses’ opponents.

Stephen Colbert has played on Wikipedia’s multiple-editor feature as well, asking audiences to log in and change entries involving elephants, George Washington’s slaves and the true meaning of Warren G. Harding’s middle name.

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, who is delighted with the researchers’ plans to have the site host the gene wiki, has acknowledged that the online encyclopedia isn’t perfect.

“[Wikipedia] should be thought of as a work in progress — it’s our intention to be Britannica or better quality, and our policies and everything are designed with that goal in mind. We don’t reach that quality yet — we know that,” Wales said in December 2005.

Surprisingly, Wikipedia’s perceived Achilles heel is what also seems to be helping the online encyclopedia attain Wales’ stated goal. In allowing anyone to make changes at any time, the majority’s decision has final say, and it turns out that the majority favors accuracy.

A study conducted by the journal Nature compared the number of errors found in matching science entries from Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia Britannica, long regarded as the gold standard of references. The average Wikipedia entry had four errors; the average Britannica entry had three.

Wikiality, it seems, may not be that different from reality after all.

Still, for the gene wiki to become what the researchers envision, they’ll need informed people — lots of them — who are willing to log in during a coffee break or three, check out an entry or two, and make necessary edits and additions. They’ve built it; it’s time to see if the scientific community will come.

Image from: Huss et al, PLoS Biology 2008.

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