Most of us have a pretty general idea of where our ancestors came from, and wish we knew more. Valerie Olague on the Windows Embedded team wanted to do something about it, so she sent a saliva sample to a DNA analysis company that taps into the power of big data.
Part of Olague’s interest might have been due to the fact that her job involves Windows Embedded ’s focus on helping companies tap into the power of big data in other ways. But as she writes in a blog post on Thursday, this endeavor was personal. The results?
“I found out that not only am I Greek, I am 35.3 percent Italian and 2.8 percent Neanderthal!” Olague says. “This has obviously led to very interesting family conversations, and perhaps a bit more information than I thought I was going to get.”
In addition to ancestry, she was also provided with her genetic likelihood of developing certain diseases. For more on that, and how companies like the one she used harness big data garnered from the Human Genome Project as well as data gathered amongst their user base to provide an ancestry mapping that can go all the way back to the most recent common ancestor for all modern humans, head over to the Windows Embedded blog.
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Steve Clarke
Microsoft News Center Staff