Monthly Archives: December 2013

Webhost Move

I have just moved this website over to a new domain registrar and webhost.

Hopefully, DNS has propagated and you are seeing this new location. To avoid confusion, comments on the old install are disabled.

Let me know if you run into any issues/problems. Also, is the blog faster or slower than before?

UPDATE: I had to re-import the database, so some recent comments were lost. Sorry!

23andme and FDA

FDA had asked 23andme to stop its direct-to-consumer genetic testing and as a result 23andme has issued the following statement:

After discussion with officials from the Food and Drug Administration today, 23andMe will comply with the FDA's directive and stop offering new consumers access to health-related genetic tests while the company moves forward with the agency's regulatory review processes.

Customers who purchased kits on or after the FDA's warning letter of November 22nd will not have access to health-related results. Those customers will have access to ancestry-related genetic information and their raw data without 23andMe's interpretation of that data. They may receive health-related results in the future, depending on FDA marketing authorization.

Customers who purchased kits before November 22, 2013 will continue to have access to all the reports they've always had.

While I am disappointed at this turn of events, for our project it does not change much since 23andme will still provide raw data downloads as well as ancestry information.

HarappaWorld HRP0375-HRP0384

I have added the HarappaWorld Admixture results for HRP0375-HRP0384 to the individual spreadsheet.

Do note that the admixture components do not necessarily represent real ancestral populations. Also, the names I have chosen for the components should be thought of as mnemonics to ease discussion. I chose them based on which populations in my data these components peaked in. They do not tell anything directly about ancestral populations. The best way to look at these admixture results is by comparing individuals and populations. Finally, the standard error estimates on these results can be about 1%. Therefore, it is entirely possible that your 1% exotic admixture result is just noise.

I have also updated the group averages.