23andMe Holding Co. (Nasdaq: ME), a leading human genetics and
biopharmaceutical company, released an exciting new feature for
23andMe+ Premium and Total Health members, that uncovers DNA
connections to 335 unique historical individuals, from medieval
Vikings to late Stone Age African hunter-gatherers to pre-colonial
indigenous Caribbean people to the great musical genius Ludwig Van
Beethoven.
The advanced science used to create this feature was over a
decade in the making as scientists, including those at 23andMe,
leveraged new technology for extracting and sequencing ancient and
historical DNA from bones found at archeological sites, and then
comparing living individuals’ genomes to the historical and ancient
DNA.
Among the historical genomes included in this feature are a
number of enslaved and free Black and African Americans who toiled
at an historic Maryland iron furnace in the late 18th and early
19th century. 23andMe scientists, along with researchers at Harvard
and the Smithsonian, published seminal work in August of 2023
connecting 22 anonymous enslaved and freed African Americans buried
at the site to thousands of their living relatives. The paper broke
new ground, and provided a technical and ethical benchmark for
future studies of similar, largely forgotten burial sites.
23andMe is the first leading DNA ancestry service to offer this
level of genetic matching to relatives of historical people based
on peer-reviewed, published methods and deep data analysis.
"23andMe's Historical Matches is a technical breakthrough in our
ability to accurately detect genetic connections between customers
and historical individuals." said Dan Chu, 23andMe's Chief Product
Officer. "It uses cutting-edge science to provide customers with
connections to history that can be fun, and in some cases, deeply
personal and profound."
The new Historical Matches feature leverages the same science
applied in a more consumer-friendly and approachable way to making
these connections. The connections to historical individuals like
those in Maryland or to the many others across the globe that are
highlighted in the feature will help customers as they explore
fundamental questions about who their ancestors and other
historical relatives were, where they came from, and their place in
the human story.
23andMe plans to add additional historical genomes to the
Historical Matches feature over time, offering 23andMe+ Premium and
Total Health members more opportunities to connect their stories to
past epochs.
To create this new feature and connect members to Historical
Matches, 23andMe identifies segments of DNA that individuals share
with the genetic sequences of historical individuals. The feature
relies on publicly available data, scientific publications, and the
23andMe relative matching technology to link to these historical
individuals. Most members will have a match to one or more of these
individuals, offering them a connection to specific individuals
from a particular time in history.
While most matches reveal very distant connections, some matches
may be closer. Some of these genomes are from individuals who lived
thousands of years ago, while others are just a few centuries old.
Almost all are relatively anonymous, except one of the more recent
figures, Beethoven, who died in 1827. The other historical genomes
are from unnamed individuals who were part of important historical
moments. 23andMe has collected them into nine groups.
The Viking Age — Seafaring people of
Scandinavia, the Vikings made their indelible mark between the 8th
and 11th centuries, called the Viking Age.
Catoctin Furnace Ironworkers — The Catoctin
Furnace Iron Workers were enslaved and freed African American
laborers who toiled at an iron furnace in Maryland between the 18th
and 19th centuries. The site, one of the earliest industrial sites
in the United States, produced iron goods, including making the
shells fired during the siege of Yorktown and ammunition for the
Continental Army.
Iron Age Taiwan — The Iron Age in Taiwan
refers to a period when the indigenous Atayal people began to use
metals like bronze, iron, and silver.
The Ancient Eurasian Steppe — The Eurasian
Steppe encompasses the massive grasslands and plains stretching
from modern-day Hungary and Romania to Mongolia and China. It also
was a crossroad for human migration and a hub for the spread of the
Indo-European language.
The First Peoples of the Caribbean — This group
includes indigenous people of the Caribbean who lived in the region
before colonization, between about 1,000 BCE and about 1,500 CE, or
just as Spanish explorers first encountered these communities.
The Genomic Formation of South and Central Asia
— Most South Asian populations today descend from a
mixture of two ancient populations that lived around 4,000 years
ago, whom scientists call "Ancestral South Indians" and "Ancestral
North Indians". Ancestral South Indians were also the product of a
mixture between two genetically distinct groups related to ancient
Iranian farmers and southern Asian hunter-gatherers, which likely
occurred around 2,000 BCE. Ancestral North Indians were descendants
of pastoralists (herders) who lived in the eastern part of the
Eurasian Steppe during the Bronze Age.
Late Stone Age and Iron Age South Africa — Many
archeological studies in Southern Africa focus on sites where our
earliest human ancestors once lived hundreds of thousands of
years ago, but there are other sites from the more recent past.
There isn’t a fixed date when the Late Stone Age ended in South
Africa, but the Iron Age began around 200 CE, when Bantu speaking
people experienced with iron working migrated to the region.
Ancient Northern Chinese Millet Farmers — The
fertile basin between the Yellow and the West Liao rivers was once
the home to the world's earliest complex agricultural societies.
The communities there grew millet and human migration from and
through the region helped spread the cultivation of millet, which
eventually became the staple crop of Northeast Asia, dating back
almost 8,000 years.
The Ancient City of Beirut — Beirut, Lebanon
has been inhabited for 5,000 years and has been governed by many
empires — Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine,
Arab, and Ottoman — each leaving their cultural mark but not always
a genetic one.
About 23andMe23andMe is a genetics-led consumer
healthcare and therapeutics company empowering a healthier future.
For more information, please visit www.23andMe.com.
Forward Looking StatementsThis press release
contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section
27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of
the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. All statements,
other than statements of historical fact, included or incorporated
in this press release, including statements regarding 23andMe’s
products, strategy, product development and launches, the
successful commercialization and market acceptance of new products
and objectives of management, are forward-looking statements. The
words "believes," "anticipates," "estimates," "plans," "expects,"
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although not all forward-looking statements contain these
identifying words. These forward-looking statements are predictions
based on 23andMe’s current expectations and projections about
future events and various assumptions. 23andMe cannot guarantee
that it will actually achieve the plans, intentions, or
expectations disclosed in its forward-looking statements and you
should not place undue reliance on 23andMe’s forward-looking
statements. These forward-looking statements involve a number of
risks, uncertainties (many of which are beyond the control of
23andMe), or other assumptions that may cause actual results or
performance to differ materially from those expressed or implied by
these forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements
contained herein are also subject generally to other risks and
uncertainties that are described from time to time in the Company’s
filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including
under Item 1A, “Risk Factors” in the Company’s most recent Annual
Report on Form 10-K, as filed with the Securities and Exchange
Commission, and as revised and updated by our Quarterly Reports on
Form 10-Q and Current Reports on Form 8-K. The statements made
herein are made as of the date of this press release and, except as
may be required by law, 23andMe undertakes no obligation to update
them, whether as a result of new information, developments, or
otherwise.
Contact InformationMedia:
press@23andMe.comInvestors: Ian Cooney,
ianc@23andMe.com
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