 All right, so we've got time for a few questions for our panelists, so please we encourage the audience to step up Yes, thanks very much for this very informative and and very scientifically up-to-date Presentation I wanted to direct my question to Rick Hiddles Because I saw that you had on your list for West Africa Bamalake from the Cameroon and in fact, we've been saying that in fact the Cameroon did not provide slaves to know to men enslaved Africans So we have to see the Bamalake Cameroon as a sort of Stand-in for now for the Angolan population because that's where so I just wanted to find out if That's a good database Has been updated or if this because a lot of people come to tell me well I'm from the Cameroon and I said you can't be have ancestry when there were no slaves at the time between you know 1619 and 1860 The Cameroon was not that feeder for the now some of them could be ebos because we know that Cameroon But you have to take into account that some of those they that ban to population Passed through certain genetic kind of a transformation as they made the way down both the Eastern Bantu and the Western so I just wanted to make sure that more that more now I have to say that okay that we do the The the the research and collect data for Angola, right? No, you're absolutely right I like exactly what you said just now. We have to do the research. So based on what you guys have been saying in terms of the historical research the historical evidence that Cameroon Present-day Cameroon region right did not contribute to any of the enslaved Africans that were traded now that that is still up I mean that that's not a that's not a definitive There are folks who do not believe that and in particular if you look on the coast I just came from Cameroon last December and I went to a fort along the coast of Cameroon and where enslaved Africans were housed where there was the point of no return. So there are you know historical evidence. I mean Well, we know also that let's say they went to the Caribbean that there was an enormous amount of Selling and buying of enslaved Africans in the Caribbean to the Americas too So they may not have directly come here, but they've come they could have come here via the Caribbean, but it doesn't matter Let's say you're right. Okay We see Cameroon as a transitional area anyway because it's we call it the I mean it it's been called the bite of Biafra and You look at the genetics of the Eboe communities and the some of the Cameroon groups like the Bameliki It's very they're very very similar That's that that border is a border that was given to them, you know by by European You know it was it after World War one or two, you know all of those boundaries were set up That that area consisted of families that actually were split after that boundary was set up And then of course the Biafra war they was back and forth the boundary went this way that way But the bottom line is that's a transition area So I see it as a transition of what we see in Nigeria and the transition a good point of Gabon and Angola Okay, so When we do our matches we say where the match is to a present-day country That doesn't mean that that was the present day position where or a state where enslaved Africans came from Where their ancestor came from during slavery? Do you see what I'm saying? We're matching to a present-day population Great. Thanks Rick next next question This question is for dr. Mountain I was wondering if you could share a little information about your roots in the future initiative that was launched in 2011 If you could share a little bit about the successes as well as the challenges that 23 and me his face. Yes, so this is on Okay, so in 2011 23 and me launched a program called roots into the future and The reason for launching that program was because we were conducting research into the links between disease risk and genetics By Inviting our customers to take surveys about their health and Disease status. So what was happening though is it turns out that all of the studies? we were doing were relevant only to people with northern European ancestry because those most of our customers have ancestry tracing primarily to northern Europe and So it was very frustrating for us to see that we were Just like the rest of the research genetics community were was kind of being restricted to you know Just really a subset of the world in terms of our research our genome-wide association studies, so we decided to launch this project to Enroll 10,000 African-Americans into the 23 me service and invite them to take part in research. So That project has been incredibly successful As I think I put the number up we have Well over 10,000 African-Americans have signed up and joined 23 and me and we have begun conducting the research To look at connections between health and genetics within that particular group. It's obviously a very heterogeneous group And we're also exploring You know other aspects of the the customer base through surveys and analysis of the genetic data by Including looking at ancestry as I started to show here so so the project has been very successful very high a survey response rate among the group and so engagement in the project and we've been Looking to start writing up some of the research results And focused on on the disease research. I think thanks Joanna Charles Yeah, I can this is question to all members of the panel and also to the audience, I just wonder morally is it Right for us to be charging African-Americans to trace their ancestry using this kind of information giving using Rick's a word that they were kidnapped and forcefully removed from the environment that they actually has a link to So while we're now charging for them to be able to trace that information back Should there be a phone set aside that any African-American who wants to use this kind of information? Should be able to tap into their phones and to derive this kind of information Yeah, I agree with you Charles. There should be a fund and you should be the first to contribute To me it looks like double job for the in a sense No, no, what you what you raised is a really valid point I mean and it's been part of the discussion since you know, we started doing this and so, you know The issue is should African-Americans who are descendants of enslaved Africans have to pay for what was taken from them Yeah, and you know, this is I mean the price that come way down And in fact the the initiative you were talking about was pro bono, right Joanna that particular Yes, those 10,000 tests were yeah, we're not yes to people who enrolled earlier. That's right. Okay next My question is really for the panel It just seems like such a wonderful opportunity to have representatives here from different organizations that are conducting these ancestry tests And I think one of the challenges we heard from dr. Tishkoff this morning And it continues to be a problem is obviously how to get accurate test results and I wonder To what extent do you think it's a responsibility or desirable aim for your companies to have Similar test results for people and are there steps that you're taking to get consistency among Organizations, and if so, how can you fit this with your commercial objectives You shouldn't expect that you get the same results from different companies I mean the the reference databases are different What the companies can do though is Work together to some extent to come up with a a set of standards that you could expect consistency on But you know certain tests for you know, certain companies have unique tests and that's what makes the the company unique Um, but I do think that there's room for the companies to work together to come up with a set of standards Okay, so we're over time, but uh dr. Blakey just uh 20 seconds Thanks. I have a question of dr. Mountain I was interested in roi and it seems to me that what you found with roi is you mean you weren't able to identify Had you just the dna data of a village or a nation or an ethnicity you essentially got sort of Race had mixture for him But what interests but what i'm really asking is do you have more roi's because at this point it's anecdotal Do you have a sample of 30 roi so we can see when it works and doesn't So there I think uh what we're hearing here a couple of questions about how to Be have more confidence in the results so that customers can have more confidence in the results and so One way is to have 30 roi's who know their You know history and and then we see if we recover that through dna and um But what we the other way is to simulate Individual simulate roi's or simulate and so that we we do sometimes do something like that We also have this approach where we look at the precision and recall where we ask Um, which is a little bit different. Um, we just ask how often if you do have a segment that does Should should be identified as coming from one region. How often does it actually the dna show that? And and we rerun our we keep tweaking our algorithms until that's really high And then we actually allow the customers to choose how their level the level of accuracy that they want to look at and so that's another thing we do in that direction, but um Finding lots of people who know have who will kind of be gold standards who really know the truth So to speak and then we can see if we can recover that That's a challenge and it's something we've been discussing earlier this week If there's someone who would send to each of the companies these kind of gold standard people and samples and say Can you tell tell us what your best estimate and we'll see if you know, which companies get it close to What we send us your samples everybody has good genealogies. Yeah, and um, and we'll have to stop here I want to thank the uh the panelists