Ancestry customers can find out where their DNA comes from

Consumer genetics and genealogy company Ancestry will soon be able to show its customers which side of the family any DNA matches found through the service come from. The new feature will be launched this week. It’s based on SideView technology, which the company announced in April, reports The Verge.

“We’re really excited to see what users can do with this parental matches feature,” says Caitlyn Bruns, a population geneticist at Ancestry. “I do think it will really help unlock an understanding of how you’re connected with your matches.”

The feature will allow users to more easily see where matches fall on their family tree. Previously, people could manually place people on one side of their family as they learned more about their matches. Now it will happen automatically. SideView technology uses Ancestry’s vast DNA database to sort out which parts of a person’s genome come from each parent. When it first launched, it allowed users to see which parts of their ethnicity came from each parent. Ancestry claims that SideView can be 95% accurate for 90% of customers.

Next, Ancestry plans to expand SideView with a community feature that connects people with groups of other users who may be descended from people who lived in the same area as their ancestors, says Bruns. It’ll group those communities by the parental side. Once launched, the new DNA Match feature will be available to users automatically when they log into their account.