Let’s continue to race and genetics in the 21st century! Today, race plays a significant role in the genetic field — especially in at-home ancestry testing. In the book referenced last post, Race and the Genetic Revolution, Part III, written by Troy Duster, explores ancestry testing. 23andMe sells at ancestry self-test kit for $99 on their website today; thus heavily increasing accessibility to determining one’s ancestry. As expected, the social implications of race have also increased in effect now that science is “backing” racial groups. However, it’s important to recognize, as Duster writes, that the accuracy of these ancestry kits are actually far from as accurate as they are marketed.

There are two different methods for determining ancestry — AIMs and gender specific testing. AIMs are Ancestry Informative Markers, which I will describe in the next paragraph. Gender specific testing, depends, by the name, on a customer’s gender.

If they are biologically male, their test will be dependent on their Y-Chromosome, which can trace back to who their father was, and who their father’s father was, and so on.

If they are biologically female, the same process applies — but with their mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA. The mtDNA can trace who their mother was, and who their mother’s mother was, and continue on that track as long as data allows.

However, the problem with this is that you can only trace the ancestry of one parent in your parent’s generation out of 2, and one grandparent in your grandparent’s generation out of 4, and one great-grandparent in your great-grandparent’s generation out of 8. If you continue tracing back further, you lose more and more of a customer’s ancestry. So while you can trace some ancestry, it’s definitely not as concrete as ancestry test results claim it to be — because they are first and foremost a marketing company, which exists to profit, not give customers transparency on the lack of accuracy in their results.

The other method for determining ancestry is through AIMs, which are genetic markers found on non-gender specific chromosomes known as autosomes. AIMs are inherited from both parents, and they are most frequently used to examine continental populations. The methodology includes using a reference group of people intended to represent global genetic diversity, and then compare the ancestral markers of that reference group to individual to determine their racial group. The trouble with this method is, however, that scientists are assuming the concept of 100% racial purity exists — and that the reference group of individuals they chose, which, keep in mind does not reflect continent-wide sampling due to Duster noting lack of funding, containing all of human genetic diversity. So instead, results given using this method are based on a small group of selected individuals for the reference group, not the globe. This also explains why one ancestry testing company can return drastically different results from another company; their reference groups will be different, and so are the threshold allele frequencies they have for determining each race. Basically, because the baselines drawn for each racial group will be different per company, due to different data, then the ancestry tests will likely return different results, and this should not be alarming — this should be expected.

However, its social implications are unfortunately, not lessened. Customers are not being educated on the inaccuracy of these tests, and that leads them to believe that their results are concrete — which reinforces race as a social construct. One example is a 42-year-old woman named Lorianne Rawson, who believed that she was a descendant of the Aleuts of Alaska. She submitted her DNA to The Genographic Project run by National Geographic, and her results linked her to the Yup’ik Eskimos, the historical enemies of the Aleuts. These results were presented to Rawson as definitive, but we know that they are in fact not so clear…and the personal trauma might ensue from results like that is severe.

Due to ancestry testing kits, race has been able to firmly implant itself in science, where its social implications will be heighted because people are now believing themselves to concretely and definitively belong to a certain set of racial group(s). Race in genetics can also be seen in the workforce, in forensics, which I will explore in the next post. Thanks for reading!