A few weeks ago I signed up for a personal genome sequencing through 23andMe (post). I received the first round of results this weekend.

The results are broken into two broad categories: Health and Ancestry.

Health

Health is broken into four subcategories:

  • Disease Risk
  • Carrier Status
  • Drug Response
  • Traits

I was most interested in disease risk as it indicates what future maladies I may face. Luckily there wasn't any bad news lurking in my genes. A few risks were a little higher than average but nothing too bad. For example: I have a slightly higher risk of deep vein thrombosis so I'll take extra care to move my feet when I'm flying.

On the plus side, I have a much lower than average chance of developing Alzheimers, Celiac or Diabetes (type one or two). I'm also not a carrier for any of the typical recessive hereditary diseases found among Ashkenazi Jews, though I am a carrier for the much rarer Familial Mediterranean Fever gene; good to know!

Nothing too surprising on the drug response or traits sections; much of it I already knew (e.g. slow caffeine metabolism - a cup in the late afternoon and I'll have trouble sleeping).

As I read through the traits results I had an interesting meta-insight: I was suffering from heavy confirmation bias. When I saw certain things that fit well in my world view (e.g. I'm likely to be a sprinter) I thought 'of course' but when I saw the opposite I would shrug it off; just something to be aware of as I engage with data in the future.

Ancestry

Ancestry is still processing but I'll share those results when they arrive. The only info there so far is that 3.2% of my DNA is from Neanderthals (compared to a population average of 2.5%). Perhaps that is why I find this Yahoo Answers clip so amusing?

Anyway... the first bit of results have been fun and I'm excited to see the ancestry portion of 23andMe. I'll post here when I find out.