Who are you? Where are you from? I am sure by now many of you have seen numerous ads on TV and on the internet on discovering your DNA ancestry by simply submitting a small sample of saliva. There are many companies out there offering this service, but I have personally tested out AncestryDNA and 23andMe so I will be comparing them for you. Yay!
First, and foremost, I just wanted to say that I did not get sent free kits from either companies. C’mon, I’m not that popular or have a YouTube channel to where I get sent free products to test and do reviews on. That’s right, I freakin’ spent my own hard earned money on the DNA kits. With that being said, if you’re wanting to send me free products to do reviews, feel free to do just that! I wouldn’t be against it at all. 😉
I am a very curious person in general, but not really knowing my true ethnic background besides what my Mom keeps telling me is pretty much the only information I have to go by when it comes to my ancestry. I was not adopted, but I have never met any of my grandparents before or even know how they look like. You see, my grandparents passed away before I was even born. I never got the chance to talk to them or ask them more about our ancestry. My Father passed away when I was young so I did not have the chance to pry more information out of him either. My Mom’s ethnic background is kind of unclear. She is not sure who her real Father is, but she believes that we are for the most part Mien. For those who are unfamiliar with Mien, it is a minority ethnic group that originated from China about 800 years ago according to Wikipedia since I am too lazy to do actual research. The Chinese Emperor during that time and the Iu-Mien King, King Pan declared war against each other because they were fighting over territory in China. To make a long story short, we got our assess kicked so we had to find a new home elsewhere. The majority of Mien people found homes in villages in the mountains of Southeast Asian countries of Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and etc. It was during and after the Vietnam War that many of them fled for their lives to the United States of America.
Since I don’t have any information on my ancestry extending pass my parents, I did some research and decided to purchase the 23andMe and AncestryDNA kits. Both of the kits can be ordered online at www.ancestrydna.com and www.23andme.com. Look at me, I was nice enough to convert those links to hyperlinks for easy access to the sites for you guys. AncestryDNA is $99 and 23andMe offers two different versions of the kit. If you only want the ancestry portion of 23andMe then it is only $99. However, if you want to include the health portion of the kit which gives you genetic health risk reports then the total kit comes to $199. As far as I know, I don’t believe that 23andMe allows you to just purchase the health risk portion of the kit by itself. It is either you purchase it with the ancestry portion or exclude it completely.
Both kits come in small boxes that come with very clear and user friendly instructions including pictures so if you screw up, I don’t know what to say except that your results may come back with a high percentage of Neanderthal. Each box contains a plastic tube, a funnel for you to spit into as well as the stabilizing solution that is released and activated when the cap of the tube is placed on. Moreover, the kits include a plastic biohazard bag for you to seal and send off your sample. Remember, you cannot eat, drink, rinse your mouth, smoke, or chew gum for 30 minutes before spitting into the tube. Also, you must fill the tube above the marked line with liquid saliva. Bubbles do not count! I know the tube looks like you would need a lot of spit to fill it up, but you actually only need about 1/2 teaspoon. Before you seal the bag, make sure you register the kit to the site with the barcode that is connected to that kit. If you don’t, how will you get your results? The actual kit does not have your name or information at all on it. It is almost like sending an anonymous sample. The only thing connecting you to that saliva sample is the barcode. 23andMe actually uses the same box that the kit came in as their pre-paid box to ship the saliva sample back to the company so hopefully you didn’t go the Hulk on it when you were first opening up the kit. As for AncestryDNA, the kit includes a separate pre-paid box which you can place your saliva sample in to send back to the company. Once you have shipped your samples back and the companies have received your samples, it usually takes about 6 – 8 weeks before your results will show up. Both companies provide frequent updates on which step of the process they are on while breaking down your saliva and extracting information from it.
After 6 – 8 weeks, you will receive an e-mail to let you know that your results are ready. For the ancestry results, I feel that 23andMe was a little more detailed when it comes to genetic ancestry. The results give you a generalized area in the world and breaks it down a little bit more compared to AncestryDNA. For example, the results show that I am 90.8% East Asian and then it breaks that down to say that 89.7% of it is Chinese, 0% Japanese, 0% Korean, 0% Yakut, 0% Mongolian, and 1.1% is broadly East Asian. AncestryDNA on the other hand, is too generalized for me. The results just say that I am 87% East Asian and does not break it down further. East Asia could be Russia, China, North Korea, South Korea, Mongolia, Myanar (Burma), Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Singapore, Brunei, and Palau. I was not satisfied with AncestryDNA’s results due to it being too vague for me. Go with the 23andMe kit if you want more detailed information on your ancestry.
As for the Health portion of 23andMe’s kit, I do not think that paying the extra $100 is worth it. It does test to see if you have a genetic health risk to late-onset Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Alpha-1 Antitrypsin deficiency, and hereditary thrombophilia, but that was about it. I was hoping that they would test for genetic risks such as breast cancer, cancer in general, cardiac issues, Crohn’s disease, Ulcerative colitis, chronic kidney disease, and age-related macular degeration, but none of these were tested. At the same time, there is no way to test every single genetic variant that could affect these conditions. So whether it says that you are at risk or not at risk, it does not take into consideration your lifestyle, environment, and family history, therefore making the results kind of useless. There is also a section that identifies whether or not you are a carrier of certain hereditary conditions such as sickle cell anemia, cystic fibrosis, and etc. The rest of the health results are pretty useless. It tells you about things that you already know such as what color eyes you have, what kind of hair you have, whether or not you flush when you drink alcohol, whether you consume more or less caffeine compared to others, whether or not you are lactose intolerant, whether you have dimples or not, and if you most likely have the body of a sprinter. What the fuck? Overall, I did not learn too much about myself in this section of the results.
Both kits do connect you with ancestry communities and compare your results with others in the community who could potentially be related to you which is pretty cool. So far, my results have only yielded potential 3rd – 5th cousins.
If you were thinking about purchasing a DNA ancestry kit, hopefully you found this blog entry to be somewhat helpful because there are way too many companies out there jumping on the DNA testing bandwagon at this time.
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