Over the years we&#8217;ve been lucky enough to hear from customers who&#8217;ve used 23andMe to connect with their dads.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-21188" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/David-Quote-200x200.jpg" alt="David Quote" width="200" height="200" />


Some of them simply shared their results to see the kinds of traits they shared with the fathers. But several customers, mostly adoptees, have been able to use 23andMe to find their biological fathers. We&#8217;ve heard from  several who have found their fathers and met them for the first time.
As we get ready to celebrate Father&#8217;s Day we wanted to share one of those stories with you.
Here&#8217;s David Alquist&#8217;s story, which was recently picked up by Channel 9 in Denver. 
<iframe loading="lazy" width="640" height="360" style="border-width: 0;" src="https://interactive.tegna-media.com/video/embed/embed.html?id=2221711&#038;type=video&#038;title=DNA%20match%20helps%20Westminster%20man%20find%20biological%20father&#038;site=73&#038;playerid=6918249996581&#038;dfpid=32805352&#038;dfpposition=Video_prestream_external §ion=home"></iframe>

23andMe Blog

23andMe Blog Team

Happy Father’s Day 2016

Among the many brilliant performances on the History Channels remake of the series <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-23978" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/04012016_ancestryQuote_short-200x200.png" alt="04012016_ancestryQuote_short" width="200" height="200" />best known for her work on the stage.


Like many of the actors who were part of this series, and the original that first aired 39 years ago, the part had special meaning for Rose, as she said in a recent interview with <a href="http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/roots-remake-history-kizzy-anika-noni-rose-anika-noni-rose-1201785035/">Variety</a>.


“I’m very proud of being able to be a part of this and bring it back for a new generation of audiences,” she said. “Because it is ours. It is the story  of America. I’m proud to be able to bring it back and make it relevant again.”
In the spirit of Alex Haley, the search for his own family’s roots that inspired his powerful novel, many of those involved in this series explored their own ancestry including <a href="http://roots.history.com/identity">using 23andMe</a>. Rose was among those who tested with  23andMe, learning about her own roots in West Africa.
Take a look at what Anika Noni Rose says about testing and her role in the series. 
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Know Your Roots

Two fire-scarred circular structures found hidden in a cave in France have altered scientists’ perceptions of our early human cousins, the Neanderthals.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-23993" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/6000-300x180.jpg" alt="6000" width="300" height="180" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/6000-300x180.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/6000-768x461.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/6000-1024x614.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/6000-880x528.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/6000-1180x708.jpg 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/6000.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
What these almost 200,000 year-old sophisticated structures were used for remains unknown, but their discovery, described in<a href="https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature18291.html"> the journal Nature</a>, illustrates a level of planning and organization among Neanderthal that was not known before.
“Our results therefore suggest that the Neanderthal group responsible for these constructions had a level of social organization that was more complex than previously thought,” the paper’s authors conclude.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-23459 size-medium" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Neanderthal-Image-247x300.jpg" alt="Neanderthal Image" width="247" height="300" />This adds to our understanding of our ancient human cousin, and what distinguishes them from modern humans. It’s another bit of evidence to suggest that Neanderthals were more advanced than we once thought. Neanderthals thrived in Eurasia for hundreds of thousands of years before early modern humans migrated out of Africa. At some point humans and Neanderthals crossed paths, and as shown in recent DNA studies, they intermixed. Neanderthals disappeared about 40,000 years ago, but their DNA lives on in all humans outside of Africa.
This finding, at the Bruniquel Cave in southwest France, illustrates Neanderthals may have been much more advanced than we once thought.  Over the last few years other findings have indicated that Neanderthals created tools and jewelry, and ritually buried their dead.
In the cave researchers documented how the stalagmites were each chopped into similar heights of a little over a foot high, and then arranged into two oval shapes. This was done a few hundred feet inside the cave where light didn’t penetrate, and there was evidence that they used animal bones for torches. Along the structures are specific sites that show evidence of the use of fire. There are no indications that the cave was used as a dwelling or shelter, so the purpose of the site is still a mystery. But it’s construction with hundreds of evenly cut pieces, arranged in a specific pattern, necessitated some planning.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-23992" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/2090-300x112.jpg" alt="2090" width="300" height="112" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/2090-300x112.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/2090-768x286.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/2090-1024x381.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/2090-880x328.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/2090-1180x439.jpg 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/2090.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Why Neanderthals – and another ancient cousin the Denisovans – died out and modern humans survived is a question that scientists are still trying to answer. Many of the revelations around these two ancient human cousins have been made through the use of DNA. Some suggest that intermixing with Neanderthals – which occurred about 60,000 years ago – may have helped give modern humans an <a href="https://blog.23andme.com/news/the-lasting-legacy-of-neanderthals/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">evolutionary advantage </a>perhaps giving them a better immune response against disease as they migrated into Europe and Asia.
Understanding the traits we shared with our ancient cousins, and those we did not, will help us better understand why we survived and thrived and the Neanderthals did not, and ultimately it will help us to better understand what makes us human.

Neanderthals Were More Advanced Than Once Believed

In a wonderful interview he did with comedian W. Kamau Bell, actor and producer Levar Burton explained the significance of the current reboot of the series<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-23977" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/04012016_ancestryQuote_long-300x300.png" alt="04012016_ancestryQuote_long" width="300" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/04012016_ancestryQuote_long-300x300.png 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/04012016_ancestryQuote_long-150x150.png 150w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/04012016_ancestryQuote_long-768x768.png 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/04012016_ancestryQuote_long-1024x1024.png 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/04012016_ancestryQuote_long-880x880.png 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/04012016_ancestryQuote_long-271x271.png 271w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/04012016_ancestryQuote_long-372x372.png 372w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/04012016_ancestryQuote_long-574x574.png 574w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/04012016_ancestryQuote_long-980x980.png 980w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/04012016_ancestryQuote_long.png 1080w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />


“Whether you feel like it has any relevance or meaning to you, the real truth is that it does,”<a href="http://www.motherjones.com/media/2016/04/history-roots-2016-remake-levar-burton-kamau-bell" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> Burton said featured in the magazine Mother Jones.</a> “If you are part of the fabric of America, this is your story, too.”


That was, in part, what appealed to viewers so much when the original mini-series premiered almost 40 years ago. Roots drew in more than 100 million viewers at the time and garnered nine Emmy awards. Burton, then 19, starred as the young Kunta Kinte, both he and the series became a generational touchstone for many people, particularly African Americans.



Based on a novel by<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/546018.Roots"> Alex Haley</a>, the series tells a personal story of tracing Haley’s family history being torn from Africa, through the awful Middle Passage, and ultimately bondage in America. And driving that story all along was Haley’s own quest to learn about himself, his family and where his ancestors came from.
In an article in Reader’s Digest in the 1970s, Haley said that yearning is universal.


“In all of us there is a hunger, narrow and deep, to know our heritage to know who we are and where we have come from,” Haley said. “Without this enriching knowledge, there is a hollow yearning. No matter what our attainments in life, there is a vacuum, an emptiness and a most disquieting loneliness.”


Many Americans are interested in their ancestors and their own cultural origins, but for African Americans, that question can be particularly hard to answer. Slavery severed their connections to Africa and the rich diversity of cultures there. Haley’s book offered African Americans a roadmap of sorts for tracing their own family stories and it reminded Americans of their own country’s history.
The advent of genetic testing has offered many African Americans a window into their ancestry that they couldn’t see any other way.
For Burton, who tested with<a href="https://www.23andme.com/roots/"> 23andMe</a>, testing was eye opening, and it’s offered others a goldmine of information that just wasn’t available before.
&#8220;I&#8217;ve always felt there was a piece of me missing,&#8221; <a href="https://www.colorlines.com/articles/see-levar-burton-malachi-kirby-learn-about-their-roots" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Burton said.</a> “I’m sure a lot of black people in this country have that same feeling… that who I am did not just begin here; that I’m part of a lineage that goes back much further than that… and to have the proof in my hand&#8230;it’s powerful.”
See Burton and the actor Malachi Kirby, who plays Kunta Kinte in the new version of Roots, talk about using 23andMe to explore their ancestry.
 
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Roots Revisited

Sandi had 50 years to prepare for this moment, but as she walked off a plane in Sacramento she felt the anxiety and doubt well-up inside.
&nbsp;
<div id="attachment_23917" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-23917" class="size-thumbnail wp-image-23917" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Candance-Christine-Sandra-Sandi-200x200.jpg" alt="From left Candace, Christine, Sandra and Sandi, having lunch the day Sandi met them for the first time." width="200" height="200" />From left Candace, Christine, Sandra and Sandi.</div>
“It was like the night before you get married and you get cold feet or jitters,” said the 50 year-old mother from New Hampshire. “You just know that in a moment your life is going to change, and you worry that maybe you’re not ready.”


Adopted at birth in Florida, Sandi had spent her whole life looking for her biological mother, wondering if she was out there somewhere.
Then after decades of searching without success, she found her after discovering a second cousin named Steve on 23andMe. Her cousin, who is about ten years older, had remembered when his aunt, Sandi’s mom, was pregnant with her. 
<div id="attachment_23916" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-23916" class="size-thumbnail wp-image-23916" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/ChristineSandi-200x200.jpg" alt="Christine, left, and her sister Sandi." width="200" height="200" />Christine, left, and her sister Sandi.</div>
It was through Steve that Sandi was able to connect with her mother and sister. Sandi’s trip across the country – just two weeks before Mother’s Day – was her chance to meet her mom for the first time. It was a meeting she’d fanaticized about her whole life, but as Sandi got closer to meeting her mother, she became more and more nervous.
While she splashed water on her face in the airport bathroom and ratcheted up her courage, her mother Sandra Freeland and Sandi’s sisters, Christine Herrera and Candace Campbell – who she was also meeting for the first time – had their own anxious moments as they waited for her in the terminal.
Christine had already bonded with Sandi through Facebook and several phone calls, but seeing Sandi in person for the first time triggered all sorts of emotions.
“There was so much going on inside me it’s hard to describe what I was feeling,” said Christine, who is Sandi’s full sister.


All her life, Christine felt like something or someone was missing. She had known most of her life that she had a sister out there, who’d been given up for adoption by her mother. Now after finding Sandi she felt like she was uncovering a missing part of herself.
For their mother, Sandra, meeting her daughter Sandi instantly brought her back to the few days she had with her as a newborn just before giving her up. At the time she’d been an out-of-work single mother trying to raise another another young daughter. County social workers in Florida had encouraged Sandra to give up the newborn for adoption, telling Sandra that if she kept Sandi there was a chance she’d lose both of her girls. It was an awful choice, but Sandra thought that giving up Sandi would offer her a better life than she could give her. But it was agony letting her go.
“I never stopped thinking about her,” Sandra said more than 50 years later. “Never. She was constantly on my mind.”


Each of the women were wound tight with emotion as Sandi walked into the terminal and into her mother’s arms for the first time in 50 years. As they held each other Christine stood next to them with tears in her eyes and her hands over her mouth.
They held each other for a very long time, and then Sandra whispered into her daughter’s ear.


“I told her it felt so good to hold her again and that I never wanted to let her go,” Sandra said. “And then I told her that I always loved her and I never stopped loving her.”


As she looked into her daughter&#8217;s eyes she instantly remembered holding her as an infant and the staring into her young eyes then, she said.
Almost weak in the knees with her own emotion, Sandi said none of the millions of meetings she’d imagined having with her mother over the years was quite as good as what really happened.
Sandi had been raised by a couple who’d been unable to have children. They were older when they adopted her, and they both passed away by the time Sandi was just 25. Although she adored her adopted father, she said her relationship with her adopted mother was more difficult. Still Sandi is thankful they provided her a stable upbringing. But Sandi never stopped looking for her biological mother, and over the years she’d fantasized about meeting her.


“To be held like that was something I’d dreamed about my whole life,” Sandi said. “I mean, it was my own mom holding me in her arms telling me she loved me, telling me how much she loved and missed me my whole life. It was amazing.”


For Christine, too, the moment was a bit surreal and overwhelming.
<div id="attachment_23918" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-23918" class="size-thumbnail wp-image-23918" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Candance-Sandra-Sandi-Christine-200x200.jpg" alt="From left Candace, Sandra, Sandi and Christine." width="200" height="200" />From left Candace, Sandra, Sandi and Christine.</div>
“I’m still in awe, still dumbfounded by it,” she said.


Just 11 months younger than Sandi, Christine said meeting her sister – their older sister had passed away more than a decade ago – was also something she’d dreamed about. Deep down Christine always thought she’d been a twin, and that missing twin sister was out there somewhere. Finally meeting Sandi and spending time with her she felt like reconnecting a missing part of herself. The connection she has had with her sister is like nothing she experienced before.
After meeting at the airport, Sandi spent a few days with Christine, and then met her extended family at a dinner in Sacramento – including her cousin Steve with whom she connected on 23andMe and who helped her find her mother. Sandi also got some more one-on-one time with her mother. She had a week on the coast before having to return home to her own kids.


“It’s crazy to have spent my whole life looking and then to finally find her,” she said. “It’s been amazing. It’s something I’ve yearned for my whole life, and that yearning never went away. It was important to hear that I wasn’t some kind of mistake. That I was loved and missed.”


And now she has someone she can wish Happy Mother’s Day.

Mother’s Day Delayed

<div id="attachment_23893" style="width: 209px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-23893" class="wp-image-23893 size-medium" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/David.Poznik-preferred-copy-199x300.jpg" alt="David.Poznik-preferred copy" width="199" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/David.Poznik-preferred-copy-199x300.jpg 199w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/David.Poznik-preferred-copy-768x1156.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/David.Poznik-preferred-copy-680x1024.jpg 680w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/David.Poznik-preferred-copy-585x880.jpg 585w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/David.Poznik-preferred-copy-784x1180.jpg 784w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/David.Poznik-preferred-copy-scaled.jpg 1701w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 199px) 100vw, 199px" />David Poznik</div>
In the largest study of genetic variation within the human Y chromosome, an international team of scientists has traced back branches of the male line almost 200,000 years, revealing points in history of major population expansions that appear to correspond to eras of innovation and human migration.
David Poznik, a Computational Biologist and Population Geneticist here at 23andMe and the lead author of<a href="https://www.nature.com/ng/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ng.3559.html"> the paper</a>, worked on the study while completing his graduate research in <a href="http://bmi.stanford.edu/">Stanford’s Program in Biomedical Informatics</a>. Scientists from the <a href="http://www.sanger.ac.uk/">Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute</a> in the UK and from more than a dozen other institutions also contributed to the study.


Because the Y chromosome is passed in whole from fathers to sons through the generations, it offers a unique opportunity to reconstruct migrations that have taken millennia to manifest. By analyzing changes that have slowly accumulated over time, the 42 scientists were able to uncover a hidden history within the DNA sequences of 1,244 men representing 26 populations from around the world. The team used more than 60,000 Y-chromosome SNVs (positions at which at least one sequence differs from the others) to construct a tree that indicates how all the Y chromosomes are related to one another. Using the tree, they were able to follow modern male lines backward, ultimately tracing back almost 200,000 years to the most recent common paternal-line ancestor of almost all men currently living today.
<div id="attachment_23892" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-23892" class="wp-image-23892 size-medium" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/1000y-300x243.jpg" alt="1000y" width="300" height="243" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/1000y-300x243.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/1000y.jpg 584w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Tracing back in time paternal-lines from 26 different populations worldwide.</div>
One notable feature of the Y-chromosome tree is that the different male lines naturally cluster into what are known as “paternal haplogroups” or “clades.” These groupings often correspond to different continental populations and can distinguish, for example, someone with Native American paternal ancestry from someone whose paternal line traces to Western Europe.


As a working group of the <a href="http://www.1000genomes.org/">1000 Genomes Project</a>, the researchers had access to full sequences, which they compared to one another to measure distances between different groupings or clades. Since mutations steadily accumulate, these sequence distances correspond to temporal distances, with greater dissimilarities between sequences corresponding to longer separation times between their respective groups. Using published estimates of the Y-chromosome mutation rate, they estimated the timings of divergences between different haplogroups.
At certain points in history, particularly around 50,000 years ago and again approximately 15,000 years ago, several different lineages branched off from one another at the same time, marking major bursts in population growth. The times of these bursts overlap with human migrations into Eurasia and into the Americas, respectively. Between approximately 8,000 years ago and 4,000 years ago, there were other distinct periods of expansion in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Western Europe.
While the specific causes of those expansions are less clear, Dr. Chris Tyler-Smith, from the Sanger Institute believes that “the best explanation is that they may have resulted from advances in technology that could be controlled by small groups of men. Wheeled transport, metal working, and organized warfare are all candidate explanations that can now be investigated further.”


It will be interesting for scientists to use this DNA history in conjunction with archeological evidence to reconstruct the history of human migration across the globe.
It will be interesting for scientists to use this DNA history in conjunction with archeological evidence to reconstruct the history of human migration across the globe.

Why Study the Y?

The National Institutes of Health has funded a promising new study by scientists here at 23andMe that could help alleviate some of the existing disparities in genetics research between people of European and non-European ancestry.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright wp-image-21956 size-medium" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Kasia1-197x300.jpg" alt="" width="197" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Kasia1-197x300.jpg 197w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Kasia1.jpg 369w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 197px) 100vw, 197px" />
Some estimates show that <a href="https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v475/n7355/full/475163a.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">more than 90 percent</a> of the research into the genetics underlying disease is on individuals of European descent alone. There are several reasons for this  – historical, cultural, economic, and social. The lack of diversity has meant that non-Europeans have not benefited from the huge advances in genetic research. Still, by leveraging 23andMe’s large and ethnically mixed customer base, researchers here think they can change that.
“This could help reduce the genetics research disparities among groups in the United States and elsewhere,” said Kasia Bryc, the senior scientist and population geneticist at 23andMe who will lead the research. “The scientific impact of findings from this research may be significant.”

Instead of using traditional genome-wide association studies to identify genetic variants associated with disease, this approach, called mapping by admixture linkage disequilibrium, or admixture mapping, takes advantage of the history of population mixing in the United States. Although admixture mapping was first suggested decades ago, leveraging 23andMe’s database would take it to a larger scale. 23andMe has more than 1.2 million customers, 80 percent of whom have consented to participate in research.
Although most of our customers are of European ancestry, our customer base includes large numbers of African Americans and Latinos. 23andMe has also gotten very good at estimating ancestry along the genome, which is crucial for detecting associations with disease via admixture mapping.
Mapping by admixture linkage disequilibrium works by tapping into variants or sets of variants found more frequently <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-full wp-image-23763" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Pattern-of-Ancestry.jpg" alt="Pattern of Ancestry" width="188" height="449" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Pattern-of-Ancestry.jpg 188w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Pattern-of-Ancestry-126x300.jpg 126w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 188px) 100vw, 188px" />within one ancestral group. In admixed populations – such as African Americans and Latinos who have mixed European, African, and Native American ancestry – using this method may be a way to more easily identify disease-causing variants.
Looking at individuals with specific diseases and where there is “enrichment” for one ancestry should highlight genetic regions associated with that disease, or so researchers hope. This is because the disease-causing variants occur more frequently in segments inherited from ancestral populations with a higher frequency of disease-associated variants.
23andMe’s research will determine whether admixture mapping could become a powerful tool complementary to large-scale genome-wide association studies.
Our researchers believe this work could help uncover genetic variants associated with disease in both people of European and non-European ancestry. However, because much of the genetic variation in Europeans has already been discovered, we expect this study to be most valuable in providing insights into biological variation for non-Europeans.
Beyond what the study could do to alleviate some of the huge disparities in health research among non-Europeans, the work could also help point the way in other areas, including guiding the development of drug targets.

23andMe Scientists Improving Diversity in Genetic Research

On Mother’s Day last year, Robin Butler’s children gave her 23andMe as a gift, not knowing it would change all their lives.
“I thought it would be fun to learn about my genome,” Robin said.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-full wp-image-23673" src="http://35.88.189.111/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Robin-Quote.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="200" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Robin-Quote.jpg 200w, https://blogcms.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Robin-Quote-150x150.jpg 150w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px" />
But testing ultimately revealed something no one knew – the man she thought was her biological father wasn’t.
“I was in total shock for three days, and I am still dealing with the aftershocks,” Robin said. “My whole family was shocked. My mother was shocked, and so was the man we believed was my (biological) father for 49 years.”
23andMe allows people to explore what their genetics tell them about traits they might share with family, or about their health and ancestry. But doing the test can also reveal the unexpected. Sometimes those surprises can be fun, but, as in Robin’s case, they also have the potential to have profound implications.
For Robin, learning that her father wasn’t her biological father sent a shockwave through her family, but it didn’t tear them apart.
Robin had a unique relationship with the man she had known as her father. He and her mother had lived apart almost all of Robin’s life, and she had only lived with him briefly when she was 13. Although their relationship was distant, she embraced him as her father, just as any daughter would. Robin’s own children also knew him as their grandfather.
When her kids gave Robin 23andMe for Mother’s Day, she turned around and got a kit for her mother. When she got her results, she saw her connection to her mother in the DNA Relative feature and a third cousin she didn’t recognize. The two connected, trying to figure out how they were related. The cousin didn’t show up in her mother’s results, so Robin knew she had to be connected to the cousin on her father’s side, but she didn’t recognize any of the woman’s family names.
Robin had also gotten a kit for her dad for Father’s Day. When his results came back, they quickly realized he didn’t share any DNA with this third cousin or with Robin.
“I thought it was a mistake,” she said. “I even called 23andMe to confirm that the results were correct.”
But she also noticed that her father shared DNA with cousins who had names Robin knew.
“That’s when I knew that this was his DNA and he wasn’t my father,” she said. “That’s when I was thrown into shock.”
While the news was hard to accept, it didn’t devastate the family. Instead, it triggered many new questions for Robin about her family and herself.
It also propelled her on a new search.
“I knew I had to find my biological father,” Robin said.
Robin talked to her dad about it.
It wasn’t easy, but his response wasn’t anger or sadness but encouragement. He told her she needed answers that he didn’t have.
“I know you need to know,” he told her.
He understood how important it was to her.
“My dad helped in the search, too,” Robin said.
Looking at her 23andMe results, Robin returned to the third cousin with whom she first connected and noticed other second and third cousins. This prompted her to search for their surnames, which were unfamiliar to her. She got additional information from her mother, who had the first name of a man who was the only other likely person who could be Robin’s father. Pooling all this information together helped narrow her search. When she connected again with her third cousin and shared some of this information, they identified who they thought her father was. Her cousin even provided Robin with a picture, which Robin then showed to her parents. They recognized him immediately and said that was who they believed was her father.
“Remarkably, through my 23andme DNA relatives (and other information), I was able to find the man who I truly believe is my biological father, all within a matter of days,” Robin said.
But her cousin thought that Robin’s biological father had passed away. It wasn’t until Robin tracked down another cousin that she learned he was still alive. Using additional information, she was able to find an address. She took the next difficult step of sending him a carefully worded letter filled with details about her mother and her own connections through 23andMe with several of his relatives.
“I mailed the letter off on August 31, 2015, (and) I prayed to Jesus,” she said.
A few days later, Robin got an early morning phone call. It was him.
“Of course, this was a great shock to him and his family, but he called,” Robin said. “Thank God he called, and he remembered my mother. Like me, he just wanted to know the truth, and so did his wife of 47 years.”
He asked to do a DNA test, and Robin sent him a 23andMe kit. A few weeks later, the results confirmed what Robin thought – she’d found her biological father.
“His response was brief, and that&#8217;s the last I&#8217;ve heard from him,” Robin said. “I&#8217;m still waiting, but I have hope. I know I will have a relationship with my father.”
Robin is his only biological child. She doesn’t know how this news impacted him, but finding him was important in understanding herself.
It made her wonder what part of herself she inherited from her biological father and what was from her upbringing.
“I thought that knowing him would help me to better understand myself,” she said.
Making the connection gave her insight into where she came from.
“I not only found my biological father but I was introduced to extended family and ancestors that I hadn’t known of before,” said Robin. “Finding him and knowing about his family tree through our cousins made me feel complete and whole.”

A Need To Know

An accomplished scientist and businessman, Stephen Levine has spent his whole life <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-23645" src="https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Stephen-Levine-200x200.jpg" alt="Stephen Levine" width="200" height="200" />searching.


That restlessness is driven by a quest that is both emotional and intellectual, a desire to learn more about the world around him and himself. It was also driven by what he calls a deep emotional trauma. But that intense curiosity about who he was and where he came from was recently rewarded with a family connection he could have only made with the help of 23andMe.
“There is a lovely tender, tear rendering story here,” said Stephen, a Ph.D., who lives in Northern Washington and works in nutritional medicine.


He’d been adopted and grew up in Brooklyn in a family in which he felt alien and disconnected to his adoptive mother.
Using details from a story his adoptive mother told him about his birth, Stephen tracked down his biological mother when he was in his early 30s.
It wasn’t the kind of reunion he’d hoped for, however.
“She was a broken person, a street person,” he said.
His mother had agreed to meet him at a White Castle fast food restaurant in Brooklyn. It was a strange place for a mother and son reunion, and while he drove to the meeting, Stephen questioned whether he’d really found the right person at all.


“Intellectually I knew it was her, but emotionally I was so shaken up I just didn’t know,” he said.


But he thought to himself:
“If this is really my mom, then when I look at her face, I will know 100 percent,” he said. “And, she’ll have green eyes.”


Just after he parked his car at the restaurant a woman knocked on his window.
“I saw her face and I saw my face within it, with her green eyes,” he said.
Wanting to get to know her and learn more about his biological family, Stephen spent two days with her in a large hotel suite that he’d rented.
“She was obviously mentally imbalanced and depressed,” Stephen said. “I asked her many questions including the name of my biological father. She did give me his last name.”


After that initial meeting, he tried to develop a relationship with her, but it was too painful and difficult for her, he said. She eventually asked him to leave her alone.
His reunion with his mother stopped any additional searching for family for three decades until his own daughter, Ariel, reignited it when she tested with 23andMe.
Ariel’s 23andMe results showed a close connection with a woman she didn’t know. That woman, Marilyn, sent her a message. Marilyn wanted to figure out how they were so closely related. 23andMe showed that Marilyn was either Ariel’s aunt or a close cousin, and Marilyn’s father matched her as a grandfather.
Ariel told Marilyn, who was from Brooklyn, about her dad being adopted and originally being from Brooklyn. Marilyn and Stephen then connected and in an email exchange Marilyn asked Stephen if he knew his biological father’s last name. He told her he didn’t, only that it was a short name and started with “Z.”


“My maiden name is Zwick,” Marilyn emailed back.
“I knew in that instant, that this was the name that my mother had told me, over 30 years ago, and that this was my father’s family,” Stephen said. “I’ll never forget that moment.”
Stephen quickly booked a flight back to New York, renting an apartment where he met his sister Marilyn as well as his biological father and a collection of other relatives
At first his father, a retired sociology teacher, was standoffish, but as they talked it became obvious that Stephen was genuine. The two men looked a lot alike and even have similar mannerisms. At some point, it seemed to dawn on his biological father that Stephen was indeed his son.
He got up and walked over to Stephen, embracing him and saying:


“I have always wanted a son.”


It was more than Stephen could have hoped for, he said. They sat together and talked and Stephen learned that he and his father shared some of the same interests. They both liked doing yoga, meditation, and that they have some of the same sensibilities. For Stephen, who’d been searching for so long, meeting his biological family was a revelation.
“They accepted me,” Stephen said. “In my mind why should they love me, but they do. It’s very deep healing.”

Ancestry Service — Page 17