AncestryDNA Update

Irish eyes are smiling. There's more detail in new AncestryDNA regions: now 16,000 reference samples defining 380 possible regions. 92 of the regions are in Ireland — 22 in Connacht and 36 in Munster. That's according to a Facebook post by ‎Mike Mulligan who used to be with AncestryDNA.

He gives the following explanation of how the process works.

 if you can imagine every DNA test at Ancestry as a star in the night sky. Now imagine the distances between stars is based on shared DNA (the more DNA shared, the closer the stars). Now 'zoom out' to see all the 'stars' in the sky and you will notice there are actually constellations or clusters of stars. With some clever science & genealogy, Ancestry is able to determine these clusters are associated with different parts of the world. These form the AncestryDNA sub-regions. The final part, about how whether the region shows up in your test is basically how close your star is to the cluster.

A friend wrote that while she is still 78% Irish/Scottish the genetic community is now Leinster matching her research.

There's no sub-division for my 34% Ireland and Scotland which comes with an error bar than goes as low as 2%! My Ireland and Scotland was 30% previously.