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Ancestry
review on 15 May 2018
by Rebecca Fishwick
At a Glance
Summary
yourDNAportal offered me an opportunity to reuse my genetic information for free, and provided a range of ancestry and health tools to analyse my digital data. Though I did not find their ancestry calculators very informative, useful or inspiring, I appreciated that the service was free, and didn’t require much of me to use it.
Full Review
yourDNAportal was started in 2017 by Gemma Rooney, and is based in London, England. Their website offers free DNA services for anyone with a digital copy of their genetic data. Their online tools are focussed on allowing people to explore their genealogy, and how their genes might impact their health.
Product Expectations
The yourDNAportal site was basic, though not entirely without polish. On their homepage, I saw that their digital DNA testing services included analyses of how my genetics might influence my health, the nutrition I require, and my athletic abilities.
I read that I could also “connect with DNA relatives” and build a family tree. They advertised their forum, though clicking on this I saw that it was “coming soon”.
I was interested to see that as they improved, which they planned to do on a regular basis, they would continue to offer their users updates on their personalised results. For a free service, I thought this was quite generous.
There were eleven different ancestry tools I could choose from, comparing my DNA to a variety of populations, varying in location and number.
Ordering Experience
Before I could take any tests, I had to register with yourDNAportal. To do this, I needed to create an account with a username and password, and provide my name and email address. Before signing up, I had to agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
I had a look through both of these. In the Terms of Use, I found that by uploading my genetic data to yourDNAportal, I was granting them a “non-exclusive, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free and perpetual licence” to use my data to perform their services. But I was able to revoke this licence by writing and asking them to delete my account and data. They made it very clear that any information provided by them didn’t constitute as medical advice, and I wasn’t to interpret it as such.
In the Privacy Policy, I saw that while yourDNAportal would not share my information with third parties without my permission or requirement by law, they might use my personal information to send me promotional information about third parties if I agreed to this. I could also request the details of any personal information yourDNAportal held about me under the Data Protection Act 1998.
Shortly after signing up, I was sent a confirmation email. To avoid any potential problems, I confirmed my email before continuing.
Now that I was logged in, I decided to go ahead and upload my data. On the upload page, I found links with information on how to purchase a DNA test if I hadn’t yet had one, and instructions on how to download my genetic data from my test provider. This included guides on downloading from 23andMe, AncestryDNA and Family Tree DNA.
I had my 23andMe data downloaded, and so I uploaded the file to the site. The upload was almost instant, and I was then able to access yourDNAportal’s online tools.
The Results
There were eleven different population calculators. The first I tried was the ‘Eurogenes K36’ calculator by Davidski.
Results Section: Eurogenes K36
When I first clicked on “Compare yourself with 36 ancestral populations”, I was met with what looked like an error message (shown below).
A pop-up message from yourDNAportal.
I wasn’t entirely sure what the message was getting at, since this tab was the only yourDNAportal tab I had open, and closing and opening it again made no apparent difference. It wasn’t until I opened the calculator again in a different tab that I saw my result (shown below).
A section of my Eurogenes K36 ancestry results.
As you can see, my results were fairly basic. They broke down my genetic admixture into percentages of different populations, some of which had obscure anthropological names. A key was provided below, with information about where the different populations came from (shown below).
A section of the population legend key.
The population I shared the most DNA with was from the “North Sea”, with which 19.6% of my DNA was matched. This area covered the UK, Scandinavia, the Netherlands and Germany. Another 16% of my DNA was matched with “North Atlantic” peoples. This didn’t include North America, but covered the UK, Ireland, Iceland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and parts of Scandinavia, Germany, France, Spain and Portugal. I was surprised by how much these two populations overlapped, and so it was hard to see how they made the distinction between “North Sea” and “North Atlantic” peoples. Since all my relatives (as far as I know) are from the UK, I thought it was odd that less than half of my genealogy reflected this.
Since the majority of my ancestry came from Northern Europe, I thought I might try another calculator focussing on European populations for more specific results.
Results Section: Updated Eurogenes K13
Next, I clicked on “European calculator including 13 global populations”. This took me to the ‘Updated Eurogenes K13’ calculator. This gave me rather different results (shown below).
My Updated Eurogenes K13 ancestry results.
According to these results, nearly half of my genetic admixture (48%) came from North Atlantic peoples, while nearly a quarter (24.7%) came from Baltic populations, which included Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Roughly 14% of my ancestry came from the Western Mediterranean, an area including Portugal, Spain, Southern France, Monaco and Italy.
The results provided by the different ancestry calculators were different enough for me to wonder how they had been reached. Clicking the BlogSpot link to where the tool was sourced from, I found it didn’t work.
Summary
yourDNAportal offered me an opportunity to reuse my genetic information for free, and provided a range of ancestry and health tools to analyse my digital data. Though I did not find their ancestry calculators very informative, useful or inspiring, I appreciated that the service was free, and didn’t require much of me to use it.