Markers / Gene
CDKN2B-AS1
One position in this gene is readable from a home DNA test.
The 9p21 heart disease locus
rs4977574 · chr9:22,098,574 · A/G · evidence: established
The first common variant ever linked to coronary artery disease, and still one of the strongest. Remarkably, it acts independently of cholesterol, blood pressure, diabetes and smoking, which is why it was missed for so long.
| If you carry | What it means |
|---|---|
| No copies | You have the lower-risk version on both copies |
| One copy | One higher-risk copy, roughly 1.25 times the background risk |
| Two copies | Two higher-risk copies, roughly 1.5 times the background risk |
| Ancestry group | G (the effect version) | |
|---|---|---|
| African | 14.1% | |
| American | 41.6% | |
| East Asian | 53.1% | |
| European | 49.2% | |
| South Asian | 48.4% |
1000 Genomes Project phase 3, via Ensembl, retrieved 2026-09-23. These groupings are coarse and flatten a great deal of internal diversity, particularly within Africa. A variant being common somewhere tells you where a piece of your ancestry probably comes from, and nothing else.
Where this gene fits
If you have taken a home DNA test, these positions are already in your file.
Read my file