Asturian-American Migration Forum

After reading a report in the June 6, 2008, issue of Le Monde here in Paris [Ton genome pour 1000 dollars; Your genome for $1,000], I thought some of you might be interested in reading up on this company based in Mountain View, California.

Google "23andme" and you'll get there. If any one wants to share information about their experience with them, please do. Here's the blurb they have under 'About us':

"Welcome to 23andMe, a web-based service that helps you read and understand your DNA. After providing a saliva sample using an at-home kit, you can use our interactive tools to shed new light on your distant ancestors, your close family and most of all, yourself."

While the test is simple and noninvasive, the price ($1000) is very steep. For $1000, I could fly to Asturias and use some of my time there digging into written records. The company, 23andme, was established with the input of millions from the spouse of the owner and Google. One your personal DNA information is stored, who knows what will happen to it. Could a court order require that you test results be turmed over to the government? How carefully is your samplke handled? How is the resultant information stored and who has access to it?

The website of this company implies more than it can deliver, in my opinion. Both mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosome DNA show only one direct line of ancestors going back into the past. Given the risk of unrecorded adoption or false paternity, these lines of descent may or may not correspond to a genealogical record. As to the nuclear genes, I would give it few more years to see what happens in terms of technology and price.

We should keep in mind that - barring inbreeding (and in reality, inbreeding is always the case over time) - our number of ancestors doubles in each generation we move back in time. We have two parents, four grandparents, eight great grandparents, etc. Allowing 25 years per generation and considering a newborn baby, 100 years ago there were 16 ancestors, 200 years ago 256 ancestors, and 1000 years ago 1,099,511,627,776 ancestors. The last figure is greater than the current population of the entire world, and certainly many, many times the size of the earth's population 1000 years ago. Once obvious conclusion is that for each person, many of his or her ancestors are the same (i.e., we are all inbred to some degree). At the time of the battle of Covadonga, we each would have had approximately 3 quadrillion ancestors. What was the actual population of Asturias at the time?