Twins get some 'mystifying' results when they put 5 DNA ancestry kits to the test

guest · Jan 18, 2019

Twins get some 'mystifying' results when they put 5 DNA ancestry kits to the test
Chief geneticist at a popular ancestry company admits it's 'kind of a science and an art'
January 18, 2019
https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/dna-ancestry-kits-twins-marketplace-1.4980976

One set of identical twins, two different ancestry profiles.
At least that's the suggestion from one of the world's largest ancestry DNA testing companies.

Last spring, Marketplace host Charlsie Agro and her twin sister, Carly, bought home kits from AncestryDNA, MyHeritage, 23andMe, FamilyTreeDNA and Living DNA, and mailed samples of their DNA to each company for analysis.

"The fact that they present different results for you and your sister, I find very mystifying," said Dr. Mark Gerstein, a computational biologist at Yale University.
Twins' DNA 'shockingly similar'
He says any results the Agro twins received from the same DNA testing company should have been identical.
And there's a simple reason for that: The raw data collected from both sisters' DNA is nearly exactly the same. "We think the numbers should be spot on the same," Gerstein said.
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According to the raw data from 23andMe, 99.6 per cent of those parts were the same, which is why Gerstein and his team were so confused by the results. They concluded the raw data used by the other four companies was also statistically identical.
Still, none of the five companies provided the same ancestry breakdown for the twins.

That's why Gravel says consumers should take the results generated by these tests with a grain of salt. People need to understand these tests are not subject to the same standard as diagnostic medical testing. They are more like a "recreational scientific activity," he said.
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guest · Dec 30, 2019

Long read
My ancestry adventure: When DNA testing delivers unexpected and unsettling results
Three of the most popular services -- Ancestry, 23andMe, and Living DNA -- took me on a long, strange trip
December 30, 2019
https://www.zdnet.com/article/my-an...g-delivers-unexpected-and-unsettling-results/

In this article, I'm going to take an in-depth look at three of the most popular DNA testing services: Ancestry, 23andMe, and Living DNA. All three have interesting stories to tell. But first, I'll tell you mine.

I've been sitting on this review for almost a year. When I got the results back from Ancestry and 23andMe (Living DNA was different), I found them to be deeply troubling, opening wounds I thought I'd cauterized decades ago.
This is one of those cases where technology (DNA testing and big data) can slam hard into deeply personal issues, like religious identity and heritage.

I also want to point out that a comprehensive discussion of DNA testing must, by its very nature, include discussions of ethnicity, race, heritage, culture, and privacy. We've talked a lot here on ZDNet about DNA privacy, but comparatively little about ethnicity, heritage, and race. [...]
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Finally, because the results from Living DNA were so radically different than those from Ancestry and 23andMe, I'm forced to question, "Which is real? Can we really trust the results of any of these tests?"
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Twins get some 'mystifying' results when they put 5 DNA ancestry kits to the test

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