DNA Updates. LivingDNA

A few days ago, I received an email from LivingDNA to say there was an ancestry update available, so I clicked the relevant buttons to start the update process.

At the same time, I took a look at the Wellbeing section of their website and, although I am not overly interested in that side of my results, I noticed that they did offer two reports for free, so put through an 'order' for those.  It will be interesting to see how the information compares to that available from 23andMe but, since it takes 6-8 weeks for the report to arrive, I'll comment on that later.

The ancestry update was said to typically take under 48 hours and, true to that, the next day I received an email stating the results had successfully updated.

So who am I now? 😉

My 2020 LivingDNA ancestry results

Above the figures section, there is a "Last updated" date and, by clicking there, it is possible to get back to a page with details about the recent update and the opportunity to "view previous results".  When clicked, the previous results just appear as figures in a pop-up window so it currently looks as if the only way of keeping a copy of the previous results map would be to take a copy before updating your results.

A pdf of the old figures can be requested - but despite the pop-up saying "Download pdf", clicking that doesn't immediately produce the pdf to save.  Instead a message pops up to say the previous results will be available shortly and in the meantime you can screenshot your results - of course, if your previous ancestry involved many locations, several screenshots are necessary, as it doesn't seem possible to alter the size of the results pop-up to show them all. (or you could just select and copy the figures to paste elsewhere.)

The "headlines" for my latest update state:

4 regions added,
5 subregions added
Your ancestry predictions just got better! One or more regions related to your regional data have been refined to detect your DNA ancestry with more accuracy.

But I think those are generalised headlines - as I seem to have lost more than I've gained, in the way of regions:

My 2020 updated LivingDNA ancestry results, compared to the previous results from 2017

Even though I am one of those people who tells others that the 'ancestry' results should be taken with a pinch of salt, as they are the most 'unreliable' of the findings from a DNA test, that doesn't mean I am not affected by a bit of 'confirmation bias' over my own results.

So I was rather disappointed to see these new results, in particular the reduction in the "South Wales Border" from its previous value of 61% to this new 35.7%.  After all, I have frequently shown a slide in my talks which demonstrated how well my known ancestry matched to this high level of "border DNA".

(The blue for my mother's side of the family might not seem a good match to the multitude of colours in the rest of the 'Do-nut' chart but the blue represents Southeast England, which includes London and, within a couple of generations back from the pedigree shown, my mother's side of the family were spread out in counties such as Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and even another country, Germany, so it would be a better fit if I'd extended the pedigree further.)

There's more information from when I first produced the pedigree, in 2017, on my blog at A slight sidetrack - my LivingDNA results  from which I note that, at that time, the "South Wales Border" was actually only showing 41%.  This is because that was written when my results first arrived and there was then an update later in the year, when this region increased to 61%.

So, what do these new results tell me?

Results change because the companies have gathered more data. This changes the genetic signatures that the predictions are based on.  Theoretically, these new results are more accurate - but they will continue to change, as more data is gathered.

As you can see from this comparison of my ancestry at three different dates, the percentages might go up or down for any given region, and some regions will appear or disappear totally:

So maybe it's time to remind myself to take the 'ancestry' percentages (from any company) with a good pinch of salt!




My original blog post about my LivingDNA results
https://notjusttheparrys.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/a-slight-sidetrack-my-livingdna-results.html