That includes the data from some of my deceased family members.
As Roberta documents, the changes made by the company go further including restriction in the number of matches and that you can no longer search by common surname or ancestral location.
This is no encouragement to respond positively to the company's endless requests to "contribute to research", which means enhance their ability to profit from your DNA result.
2 comments:
This blog post is somewhat misleading. It is not true that the updated ethnicity estimates will not be offered to 23andMe customers who tested on the older chips. 23andMe are still investigating whether it will be possible to make the update available.
See this thread in the 23andMe Forums:
https://www.23andmeforums.com/discussion/35915/the-23andme-ancestry-composition-algorithm-gets-an-upgrade
23andMe Customer Care have responded with the following comments:
"Now that this update has been made available to v5 customers, the next step is to determine whether this update will be made available to previous chip versions. We don't have any updates at this time, but we'll let you know here once we do!"
"Our team is working to determine if the additional R&D and work will be done to make this update available to previous chip versions. We don't have any additional insight at the moment, but we'll be sure to keep you updated once we do."
"Our team has not yet determined whether or when this update will be made available for pre-v5 customers - we do not have any additional information available at the moment."
There is very low overlap between the v5 and the older chips:
https://isogg.org/wiki/Autosomal_SNP_comparison_chart
I suspect this is going to make backwards compatibility increasingly challenging and costly.
I have a health test at MyHeritage which was done on the Global Screening Array, the same chip that 23andMe now use. I found that 47% of my matches at MyHeritage don't match either of my parents. I suspect there are, therefore, very good reasons for 23andMe restricting the number of matches for people on the older chips.
There is always going to be a limit as to what we can expect a company to provide for a one-time payment. Technology progresses. I have CDs that no longer work on a 64-bit computer. I had to get rid of printer because the drivers were not compatible with Windows 7.
However, I do think it is unfortunate that 23andMe have removed some functionality but the option to take out a subscription to access the additional features is currently restricted to US customers.
Interesting Debbie that you mention "47% of my matches at MyHeritage don't match either of my parents" as I also did the Health Test at My Heritage and removed my old results from My Heritage. Some of the matches with my kit do not always overlap with my phasing of the set of five siblings results that I did looking at my grandparents (all are on My Heritage as uploads). I have some quite large matches (in excess of 25 cM) that are solely mine but I have sufficient reason to believe that the individual whom I match should also match one or other of my siblings in that we have tested as a group at all of the sites with at least four at each site. Thank you for mentioning that actually as it is reassuring that you have found that also to be the case. I have been ignoring such results in terms of using them in my phasing routine. Regularly, every year I do a relook at the phasing looking at the acquired matches over the previous year.
The changes to my ethnicity from the V2 chip to the V5 (I also retested) are quite minimal although it will be interesting if my three siblings there from the V4 chip can also be upgraded. Elizabeth Kipp
Post a Comment