When British prince William decided to marry the then `commoner’ Kate Middleton, one of the findings of genealogists was their common connection with Edward III, who reigned between 1327 and 1377.
Have you wondered about your roots? If so, there’s technology now that has mapped Indian genetic data. Hyderabad-based molecular diagnostics firm Mapmygenome’s Genomepatri Heritage provides ethnicity composition by SNPs (single-nucleotide polymorphisms), which are the most common type of genetic variation among people. It has mapped more than 20,000 genome records and delved into the cultural, ethnic, and geographical diversity that forms our genetic legacy.
Public databases give you around 2,000 genomes. But that will only give you a broader picture, such as that you have Caucasian ancestry. If you want to know whether you are more likely to be from Telangana or Kerala, it needs unique data from different parts of the country. That’s one of the reasons why we waited for a long time to release our product,” says Anu Acharya, founder & CEO of Mapmygenome. The response has been overwhelming. “Never thought Indians would be that interested in finding out their ancestry because everyone thinks they know where they came from and have been in a particular place for generations, which is obviously not true,“ she says.
Mapmygenome took data from worldwide databases and also from specific parts of the population within India. The work required analysing the quality of the genomic data, removing identical data, and analysing for a certain number of generations. “Then you calculate a statistical value using machine learning,” Anu says.