Markers / Gene
KCNQ1
One position in this gene is readable from a home DNA test.
The diabetes variant that Europe nearly missed
rs2237892 · chr11:2,839,751 · C/T · evidence: established
KCNQ1 was found by studying Japanese populations, not European ones, and it is one of the strongest type 2 diabetes signals in East Asia. It is a reminder that a genetics built only on European samples finds only the variants Europeans have, which is a real and ongoing problem in the field.
| If you carry | What it means |
|---|---|
| No copies | You have the lower-risk version on both copies |
| One copy | You carry one higher-risk copy |
| Two copies | You have the higher-risk version on both copies |
| Ancestry group | C (the effect version) | |
|---|---|---|
| African | 91.1% | |
| American | 72.2% | |
| East Asian | 64.5% | |
| European | 93.7% | |
| South Asian | 98.6% |
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