What your raw DNA data can and cannot tell you

What can I learn from my raw DNA data?

The same file supports several kinds of interpretation:

• Everyday traits, from muscle fiber type to taste, hair, and earwax.
• How your body tends to respond to certain nutrients.
• Carrier status for some inherited conditions.
• Pharmacogenomics: how you may process certain medicines.
• Ancestry composition.

You can browse every marker we read, each explained and sourced, in the traits and health markers catalog.

Can raw DNA data tell me about health risks?

To a degree, and always as probability rather than certainty. Many well-studied variants nudge the odds of a trait or condition up or down, and that is worth knowing. But a variant that shifts risk is not a verdict: lifestyle, environment, and the many genes a chip does not read usually matter more than any single position. Read health results as one input, not a conclusion.

Can raw DNA data diagnose a disease?

No. Consumer raw data is not a clinical or diagnostic test, and nothing in it is medical advice. It reads only a fraction of your genome and misses most rare, high-impact variants that clinical tests are designed to find. If something looks health-relevant, confirm it with a clinician and, where appropriate, a validated clinical test before acting on it.

How accurate is raw DNA data interpretation?

Two separate things affect accuracy. First, the genotype reads themselves are generally reliable but not perfect, so a rare surprising result can be a chip error worth confirming. Second, and more often the issue, is interpretation: the strength of evidence behind a SNP varies a lot, and a finding backed by many large studies is far more trustworthy than one from a single small paper. This is why we show a confidence rating and the sources behind every result, described on our methodology page.

Why do different tools give me different results?

Because interpretation is a set of choices, not a single answer. Tools differ in which variants they include, which studies they trust, how they handle strand and effect direction, and how conservative they are with weak evidence. The underlying letters in your file do not change; the reading of them does. That is a good reason to prefer tools that show their sources so you can check the claim yourself.

More guides

• How to read and interpret your raw DNA data
• What's inside your 23andMe or AncestryDNA raw data file
• How to analyze your raw DNA data (free and paid options)