Genetic Ancestry Of African Americans: Article Analysis

“The Genetic Ancestry of African Americans, Latinos, and European Americans across the United States” is an article developed by the company 23andMe. The authors of this article are Katarzyna Bryc, Eric Durand, Michael Macpherson, David Reich and Joanna Mountain. 23andMe studied the genetic ancestry of 5,269 self-described African Americans, 8,663 Latinos, and 148,789 European Americans who are 23andMe customers and show that the legacy of these historical interactions is visible in the genetic ancestry of present day Americans. Although the US government has census surveys that establish fine scale self-described ethnicity at the state and county level, 23andMe look at the relationship between genetic ancestry and self-reported ancestry for each region. These studies can inform medical studies and personalized medical treatment. How
The participants were drawn from the customer base of 23andMe and were genotyped on the illumine HumanOmniExpress platform. These participants were then asked to fill out web-based questionnaires that involved ancestry and ethnicity, state of birth and the current zip code of residence. The company than obtain ancestry estimates from genotype data using a support vector machine-based algorithm that infers population ancestry using reference panels to investigate patterns of native Americans, African and European ancestry. First, we will look into the Genetic ancestry of 5,269 African Americans across the US. The results of this study show that 1 in every 20 African Americans carry Native American ancestry, which was a higher rate than what they detected in self-reported European Americans. They also reported that over 14%