This being the first day of the new year I thought it only fitting that I write about MyHeritage’s Genetic Groups update that dropped on December 24. They are free to anyone who has taken a test at MyHeritage or uploaded it there. I have three uploads, my 23andme which was uploaded in Sep 2018, my brother’s Ancestry which was uploaded in Mar 2018, and my father’s 23andme which was uploaded in Aug 2020. Since my brother and my uploads were done in 2018 we were grandfathered into having access to most of the DNA tools without having to pay. It’s interesting how both our uploads perform, my brother’s upload has 520 DNA relatives while I have 500. Our father on the other hand has 1,006 DNA matches!
Here’s my Ethnicity on MyHeritage, I didn’t receive any Genetic Groups, unfortunately, these results don’t really make much sense to me and have never changed since I uploaded them.
Here’s my brother’s Ethnicity, he has one Genetic Group in, the Netherlands, which makes sense since I knew we had relatives in the Netherlands.
My father’s upload was stuck behind the paywall because it was uploaded after MyHeritage stopped allowing the free uploads but I never really thought about paying for it since I could see his ethnicities by comparing his account with mine or my brother’s, I have to admit though, seeing that he had 3 Genetic Groups and I had no way of seeing them unless I paid made me very curious. I ended up paying 34,80€ to unlock his DNA results.
I’m not sure if being able to change the Confidence level of the Genetic Groups is part of the paid DNA account or if it’s due to the fact that there is more than one Group.
Puerto Rico and USA Genetic Group make perfect sense as my father has a lot of families that moved to Puerto Rico and then their children later on moved to the USA.
The other two Genetic Groups I wasn’t expecting if you read the About this Genetic Group section it’s mostly British and some Irish and German settlers, on my father’s paternal side we have a few Irish/British lines so this makes sense.
In conclusion, the Genetic Groups have been a pleasant surprise just waiting on an update to the Ethnicity because I’m not really sure what could be contributing to the South Asian in both mine and my father’s composition.