Wednesday, September 2, 2015

DNA Ancestry VS. 23andMe

YIPPEE..  So I got my results back for my aunt. She tried 23andMe two times. I decided to try her one more time with Ancestry. Bingo, before 23andME would have even acknowledged they had her sample, I had the results.

This is very exciting. Now why did 23andME find it so hard to get results?  One difference I note is that Ancestry uses a "stabilizer". A fluid that is added to the test results. Perhaps that is why. Also, since Ancestry seems to get to analyze the sample more quickly, it seems that 23andME might also want to think about adding a stabilizer.

Another idea, perhaps 23andME is more stringent with their results. I ran into a small hiccup uploading the sample to GEDMATCH. I needed to analyze the DNA results file from Ancestry and found that there is an unusually high number of "no calls" in the sample. (roughly 2.1% compared to my sample which was 1.8%) Not really sure what all that means, perhaps the DNA was not intact and the information could not be obtained, but the result, according to GEDMATCH is that I will have an unusually high number of false matches in the new test. Well, that really is not a problem to me. If valid matches are confirmed by a few of the known ancestors, I am fine with her just being the added hint to solve a mystery.

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