23andMe Adds Paternal Ancestry and an Updated Gene Journal

The Spittoon (23andMe’s blog) announces their new paternal ancestry tool. The information was already obtained from all male participants, so no further sampling is needed. I’m not sure which SNPs they are using to determine haplogroup status, but I’ll look into it.

The Gene Journal (here) adds 30 conditions and traits to bring the total number to almost 60. Interestingly, the conditions and traits are classified as either “Established Research” or “Preliminary Research” based on the studies from which they are derived.

And finally, there is a free demo account that “lets you explore all the features of our service using genetic data from our sample family, the Mendels.” It’s a good way to examine how the genomic data is analyzed and returned to customers using a browser interface.

23andMe also recently discussed the decision to name the company ’23andMe.’ I wrote about the name on the blog a little while ago (here).