Ancestry as a window into your past

Twenty years ago if someone asked you where your family was from you might give an answer involving where your father’s great-great-grandfather was from, and about how long your mother’s side had lived in Kentucky. If you were a Jewish American you might date your genealogy back to the great migration out of the Russian Empire over 100 years ago. If you were an African American much of your family’s background would be passed down through oral tradition

That has changed today with the rise of direct-to-consumer genetic testing. These tests do not replace the methods we have long used to understand our personal history, they complement them. That is why we are proud to announce our Regional Ancestry product.

The human genome is billions of bases. There are tens of millions of variations within that genome that defines how you as an individual differ from the rest of the human race. And millions of these variations define how different human populations vary from each other because they have been separated by time and distance.

But at Insitome we don’t just give you a sequence of raw genetic data, a string of As, Cs, Gs, and Ts. Rather, we interpret the raw results through a model of ancestral population clusters that give you regional and historical insights.

These ancestral clusters are designed to give clear and easy answers to questions such as:

• Where did your ancestors live?
• When did the unique threads of your ancestors come together?
• Who were they as peoples?
• And how did they flourish to give rise to so many descendants today?

By selecting and refining samples from over 5,000 individuals in the public data we have assembled 26 regional ancestral population clusters which give you insights into your heritage. These clusters are constructed from diverse groups. The indigenous hunter-gatherers of South Africa, European Jews whose ancestors were from Poland and Russia, or Siberian nomads.

Using geographic variation from the islands of Indonesia to vastness of Siberia, people of Asian descent will get a clearer picture of the diverse pictures which come together to form their heritage across four regional clusters. Similarly, in the Americas indigenous ancestry is divided across three distinct groups, with a north to south distribution. People of European and African descent will be able to understand how the diverse populations within the continent came together to create their own personal history, and the connections that they have to groups outside of the continent of their origin.

The record of your genealogy reflected in your genes is not the totality of who you are, and who your ancestors will be. Rather, it is another window onto the past that sheds light on a chapter in your personal story.

Now what are you waiting for! Explore another chapter in your DNA story with Regional Ancestry.