AncestryDNA Ethnicity Update in the Works

Recently, AncestryDNA have announced that in coming weeks, they will be rolling out a new ethnicity update with a banner at the top of the DNA homepage. Clicking on the banner takes you to a page that promises new regions and their most precise breakdown yet. It includes a map showing the different coming regions, but we don't get any details beyond the map. It also claims to have over 40,000 samples in their reference panel, and looking at the new white paper shows it's actually over 44,000 which is only a slight increase from the last update which used just over 40,000. With only a minor increase in the samples, that suggests much of the update might be in a change to the algorithm. The FAQ on the announcement page provides a little more info, but it doesn't actually detail what the new breakdowns will be.

Left: European regions before the upcoming 2020 ethnicity update. Right: European regions after the upcoming ethnicity update.

However, we can get a little bit of a preview by looking at our newest DNA matches, who are obviously already receiving the update. If you go to your DNA match list and click "groups" and select "new matches", then look at the ethnicity comparison with them.

From that, you'll be able to see some of the new regions and how they will be broken down. For example, Wales will now be a separate category, no longer lumped in with England/NW Europe, and Ireland and Scotland are now separate categories too.

In southern Europe, Italy will be split up into Northern and Southern Italy (see below). This isn't shown in the before/after map Ancestry's announcement page provides, which is why I say it's not very detailed and I don't think it's giving us the full picture. Additionally, Cyprus will be getting it's own category, no longer a part of Turkey/Caucasus or the Middle East.

It doesn't look like there's much, if any, changes to Africa, Native America, or Asia, but that's because the before/after map on the announcement page isn't reliable. The "before" map seems to actually be using the regions from two updates ago, not what it is now. That's misleading, and if you compare the "after" map to what it is now, there's no difference in Africa, the Americas, or Eastern Asia, only to Europe and West Asia. But the new "after" map doesn't include some new regions we know are going to exist (like Wales). So that map really isn't reliable and doesn't really tell us much. However, the map in the new white paper looks like it does include new areas. It's not interactive and doesn't let us zoom in to see details, but it does appear that there are indeed new regions in other parts of the world too, not just Europe and West Asia. I am not sure why the before/after map on the announcement page is not actually showing the new regions/breakdown when that is supposed to be it's sole purpose.

Left: Africa on the announcement page, supposedly what the update will look like but its exactly the same as it is now. Right: the updated Africa map from the new white paper - what the new regions will actually look like after the update.

They've also already updated their white paper with the European PCA chart.

Here we see quite the breakdown into individual countries, but these are just where their samples come from and don't necessarily reflect how they might group the populations in our results. Like the last one this PCA chart doesn't really show much difference between Portugal and Spain, so attempts to split them up might not be accurate. And of course, we are still seeing massive overlap among all of Northwest Europe. The British Isles, Germanic/France, and Scandinavia all share a significant genetic overlap that still makes them difficult to tell apart in many cases. There are some German and French samples not a part of that group, but there are also many which are. This is understandable since France also shares some overlap with it's neighboring Spain, while Germanic Europe shares DNA with it's neighboring Eastern Europe.

But particularly in regards to the new results splitting up regions like Ireland and Scotland, or England and Wales, I'm skeptical about the reliability of that since the PCA chart shows no new genetic distinction between them.

Additionally, I noticed that European Jewish is missing from the PCA chart, which is a shame because it's always interesting to see how genetic unique they are. And as ever, the PCA chart only includes Europe for some reason, we never get to see ones for other areas, which might be enlightening.

This will be AncestryDNA's third update in three years - does this mean we can expect the norm to now be an update every year, even if it's only some tweaking to the algorithm? We can only wait and see.