12 September 2018
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Former ethnicity percentages for an Ancestry DNA customer, Helen Tovey's father
You're genes don't change, but your DNA test results do! Take a look at Ancestry's new ethnicity reports - you may not be quite where you thought you were from! Helen Tovey takes a look at her Dad's update
‘Your DNA doesn’t change, but the science we use to analyze it does. Your results may change over time as the science improves’
This is the notification you’ll see if you log in to your Ancestry DNA results today. So, what does it mean for your DNA family history discoveries?
Firstly, to clarify, it will make no difference to your cousin matches. They are ascertained by a combination of the Ancestry DNA database comparing strands of your DNA with those of other people in the database, and making matches and estimates as to how closely you are related with another person – which you then follow up and match with your traditional family tree research, enabling you to identify which branch you match on, and precisely how you are related.
Secondly, the new developments on Ancestry today will make a difference to your Ancestry DNA ethnicity reports.
You can still see your old results and toggle between them using the button at the bottom. Take a look and see how they've changed.
The new results have been made possible as Ancestry DNA has increased the number of reference samples from 3,000 to 16,000 such samples, and has compared longer strands of DNA. The outcome of these developments is intended to mean that some of your outlier percentages, ones that have a low degree of confidence, will possibly be removed from your ethnicity report.
So if you were confident that you were X% of a certain region – perhaps it’s time to think again…