DNA Tribes Update

With the recent DNA Tribes SNP analysis/ update special (which is currently still going on), I decided to get my mother's and my analysis updated to included the newer populations such as: Andalusia Spain. Germany and Austria, Greek Mixed, Italy General, Netherlands, Portugal, Russia General, Serbia and Croatia, Southern Italy and Sicily, Assyria and Tibet. The main ones for me of importance were the European populations seeing as how I don't have Middle Eastern/East Asian ancestry (at least that I know of!). Here are the results of an example Puerto Rican and what the results would look like. Just a side-note: Since I tested with 23andme, I was able to use that raw DNA information for DNA Tribes to analysis. And so I want to show you the changes from the old analysis to the new one using my results as an example. I'm going to add snapshots of my results from both the old and the new to show you the differences. I will post the old results on the top and the new results on the bottom. 

8 Continental Zones

Here we can see some slight changes on the continental zone percentages. As we can see, with the lower continental zones such as Asian (South/East/North) I scored 0.00% on both the old and new and the update includes Northeast African which I also scored 0.00%. We see though that my European percentage goes from 45.79% to 56.4%. While my Middle Eastern drops from 24.74% to 12.4%, which is significant drop. My guess is that there was a shift of what was considered Middle Eastern and the populations were spread out more. My Sub-Saharan African goes up a bit by about 1% and my native as well. 

24 World Regions

Here we can see the break-up of Europe, Africa and Asian into what is called the 24 World Regions. Notice how my Baltic-Urals Region jumps from 5th place to 2nd place and my Arabian goes from 3rd to 9th. It seems that my highest contributor from Africa come from both Western Africa and Northern Africa which are both historically true to my background. With the importation of Western Africans for slavery and the Northern African conquest of lower Spain, both are contributors to the ancestry which I carry. Interestingly, my great grandfather matches a person on 23andme's ancestry finder with all 4 of their grandparents born in Morocco. I would love to find out how I connect to that person!

Native Populations

This new section called Native Populations was very interesting to me. I obviously take these results with a grain of salt but nevertheless they are very interesting. As you can see here, I included the first 14 countries listed in my Native Populations section. Interesting, England is ranked first at 12.5%, for reasons I don't know. I have no known English ancestry but it could be very possible (my mom's native population ranks England second at 5.7). Next you can see Spain which makes sense, then Aymara from Bolivia which is a native population- my guess is that since there are no pure native genes in the Caribbean from the Taino, the native tribes from South America are the next best thing to gauge a Native American population. Then we have Russia and Poland which is very interesting because I do get cousins on 23andme from these countries. Followed by some more countries. On the DNA Tribe analysis it mentions: 

"This portion of your report identifies ancestral contributions to your genome from native populations. These mixture percentages do not indicate percentages of nationality or ethnicity. Instead, mixture results below express geographical signals of ancestry based on the populations sampled in our database. These genetic signals can reflect present day ethnicity, as well as more ancient links between populations through shared origins, migrations, and trade contacts."

All Populations

Next we have All Populations which includes Diasporic populations. Similarly they mention: 

"This portion of your report identifies ancestral contributions to your genome from all world populations in our database, including modern populations that have mixed and migrated within the past 500 years."

 
As we can see Puerto Rico is correctly placed as #1 at 55.8%. Then we see England, Russia, Poland, Aymara, Brong, Mozabite along with others which appear from the Native Populations. I wonder how accurate the use of the Brong, Bantu, Kaba (tribe of the Sara people) and Hausa people are for me. Can these tribes point to locations where slaves were brought from to the New World? It's a very interesting question and I wonder if one day I'll be able to point to places in Africa where my ancestors were brought from. 

World Grid

Here we can see as DNA Tribe states:

"This portion of your report illustrates your total genetic similarity to a world grid based on native populations in our database. Locations on the grid that are genetically more similar to you are mapped in red (most similar), orange and yellow; locations less similar to you are mapped in purple (least similar), blue and green. This map illustrates the full spectrum of your world genetic relationships."

As we can see the grid shifts a bit from showing Southern Europe to sort of Mid-Central Europe as close populations. Nothing too serious I would say, just a shift based on the native populations section they've added which probably pushes me up a bit due to the English population that ranked so high. 

European Populations

Here we can see the European populations and their similarity to me. Interestingly, my top 5 were Tuscany Italy, Spain, Finland (huh?), France and England as my top five. Most of these made sense except for the Finnish part. The new top 5 European Populations are Greek Mixed (hmmm...), Basque Spain, Poland, Portugal, and Andalusia Spain. These make a lot of sense except for the Greek and Polish I would say, but hey there are a ton of branches on my tree that I have yet to fully explore so who knows what genes I'm carrying from around the world!

List of All Populations

Here is the last one I'll add, I don't want to give everything away ;) I included the top 20 all populations. As we can see both list Puerto Rico as #1, again correct. And then we start getting some interesting results! Browse and check out the top 20! 

I guess I'll never be sure from exactly where some of branches originated from, whether that be in or out of Spain, or even in out of Puerto Rico but hopefully I'll be able to tell you more about where they were from. Hopefully you found my results such as interesting as I did! And remember not every Puerto Rican is the same, some as for example the other profile which I mentioned above, shows completely different populations from the ones I've listed. As I've mentioned before, a lot of different populations contributed to Puerto Rico's history and so there is a vast range of makes us.