Consumer genetics and genealogy company Ancestry announced a new feature, called SideView, that will give customers information about which bits of their DNA \u2014 and which parts of their ethnicity \u2014 were inherited from each parent. The tool can do that without having genetic information from the parents, which Ancestry says is a first in the industry.<\/p>\n

Separating out which parts of someone\u2019s genome came from which parent has been a challenge for researchers, says Barry Starr, the director of scientific communications at Ancestry. \u201cIt\u2019s a really big breakthrough for science in general,\u201d he told The Verge<\/em>. \u201cThat\u2019s really something that no one else has been able to do without having a parent tested as well.\u201d The feature will <\/strong>be automatically available for all users.<\/p>\n

Genetic information is packaged in pairs of chromosomes, and each parent contributes one copy of most chromosomes. DNA analysis, though, reads the sequence of genetic information without sorting out which half different sections came from. Usually, the best way to sort that out is by comparing sections to the DNA of one or both parents. But Ancestry developed a technique that uses the company\u2019s large DNA database \u2014 which includes 20 million people\u2019s genetic information \u2014 to find overlaps between each user and cousins or distant relatives also in the system. It uses those overlaps to sort each section of DNA by which parent it was inherited from.<\/p>\n

Ancestry was interested in developing a way to sort genetic information by parent for a while, Starr says, but it had to wait until the DNA database was big enough that the tool could be accurate. Now, with a database at the size it is now, Starr says Ancestry can have 95 percent precision for 90 percent of customers. \u201cThe bigger the database, the better you can do,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n