Navigating My Genome With DNA.Land Compass

You have to love a website with a homepage showing the Manhattan skyline! DNA.Land originally started as an academic project, letting people upload their DNA results from commercial DNA testers (Ancestry, etc.) to get admixture estimates and genetic relatives. In September 2019 DNA.Land ended as an academic project and relaunched as a private website run by the original researchers.

I uploaded my AncestryDNA results, and got yet another admixture estimate that mirrors the others:

The inner most circle represents my breakdown by continents, then the outer two circles represent a breakdown by region or sub-region. So the vast majority of brown in the inner circle represents "West Eurasian," which consists of Ashkenazi Jewish (unsurprisingly, almost half of me) and other European populations. Green represents "Native American." Light blue represents East Asian. Deep blue represents African, specifically the subgroup "Senegal River Valley," one of the main homelands of New World slaves.

DNA.Land had a "Relative Finder" function, but I have not been able to access it.

The most interesting part of the website is DNA.Land Compass, which allows me to find alleles that could contribute to health conditions. I can look for broad categories of genes based on health condition, or specific SNPs, or genetic base pairs. I can check my genotype for a specific base pair, learn on which chromosome it resides, and read genomic research on that base pair in an embedded page from the SNPedia wiki site.

I was initially scared to know my genetic health information, but it's hard to determine my future medical history through "risk alleles." Very few medical conditions result from a single SNP, and DNA.Land compass brings up a number of corresponding SNPs. Some of them may be beneficial and are labeled green, some of them are potentially harmful and are labeled red, and some of them are not classified and are labeled blue.

My risk alleles that are classifed can be further sorted by magnitude. This subjective scale shows how closely one should monitor the genetic risk of a particular condition. Many of my risk alleles have a magnitude of under 2, meaning they have a relatively insignificant impact.

Some of my "risk alleles" are actually benign. My SNP "rs12896399" on Chromosome 14 contributes to the recessive traits of light hair and blue eyes. My genotype for this SNP is GT (guanine and thymine), so while I have brown hair and brown eyes, I have a recessive allele. My wife, who has green eyes, used to joke that all our children would have brown hair and brown eyes. Our son does have brown eyes, but to our surprise our 6-month-old daughter has blue eyes.

That makes me wonder, where do the light eyes come from in my family? My Dad has dark brown eyes, as did his mother. I don't know my paternal grandfather's eye color, but his sister had light brown eyes, so that side might have contributed to my genome.

I know more about eye color on my Mom's side, thanks to immigration records. My Mom has hazel eyes like her father, and his parents had brown eyes, although I don't know which shade. My maternal Grandma had medium brown eyes, like her mother, but her father had gray eyes. This great-grandfather had a gray-eyed father, a brown-eyed mother, and a blue-eyed brother.

Here is my family tree with eye color. It's a slightly disturbing but interesting image:   

It's possible that my baby daughter's eyes may darken in the upcoming year, but I appreciate her shedding light on the flow of genes through our family.

Questions? Comments? Write me at ruedafingerhut (at) gmail (dot) com.