Markers / Gene
EDAR
One position in this gene is readable from a home DNA test.
Hair thickness and shovel-shaped front teeth
rs3827760 · chr2:109,513,601 · A/G · evidence: established
One change in EDAR thickens hair shafts, increases sweat gland density and puts a distinctive scooped shape on the back of the upper front teeth. It arose in East Asia around thirty thousand years ago and reached very high frequency there.
| If you carry | What it means |
|---|---|
| No copies | You do not carry this variant, so your hair texture comes from elsewhere |
| One copy | One copy, linked to thicker hair shafts |
| Two copies | Two copies, so thick hair and shovel-shaped front teeth are likely |
| Ancestry group | G (the effect version) | |
|---|---|---|
| African | 0.3% | |
| American | 39.2% | |
| East Asian | 87.3% | |
| European | 1.1% | |
| South Asian | 1.3% |
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