Addressing the feasibility of people of African descent finding living African relatives using direct-to-consumer genetic testing

Abstract

People of African descent use direct-to-consumer genomics services such as 23andMe and AncestryDNA for various family histories and health reasons, including identifying and interacting with the previously unknown living African genetic relatives. In this commentary, I argue that it is reasonable to consider that cousin pairs consisting of an African person and a descendant of an African person enslaved in the Americans during the Transatlantic Slave Trade (i.e., a person of African descent) have genealogical ancestors recent enough to be detected using autosomal DNA testing where the pair has shared ancestors in the range of 20-6 generations ago from the present.

Keywords: genetic family tree inference; genetic genealogy; genetic relatedness.