About a year ago I heard about 23andMe  and the possibility to get to know my genetic history and ancestry. A few months ago I got a kit, spit into a tube and sent my saliva to the lab for analysis. I was hoping to find something exciting. Even though I was pretty convinced that my family came to America directly from Spain, I am still not sure from which region of Spain my father’s family came from or if I have other DNA information pointing to a different part of the globe.

I have now received my results and started reading and learning about this whole interesting part of science completely unknown to me. You can review your drug response sensitivity, see your desease risk depending on your genetic information and uncover your carrier status and traits.

The more people participate the more accurate this whole system becomes. The database keeps growing and we keep getting new results. I have 129 matches of  predicted relatives (possible 4th – 5th cousins) all over the world. The highest matches have a Spanish background but I was surprised to get an email from an Irish person who has some Southern European DNA and at some point in time our ancestors met. The connection still remains a mistery  to us but perhaps, eventually we will have some impressive matches connected to both of us too.

Now I am asking my grandparents for more last names, names of cities or any particular details they might remember. There is not much I can add to my profile but as you can imagine, genes do not lie.

To read more go to 23andMe