Markers / Gene
SLC16A11
One position in this gene is readable from a home DNA test.
Neanderthal: a diabetes risk variant carried into the Americas
rs75493593 · chr17:6,945,087 · G/T · evidence: established
A Neanderthal-derived version of a sugar and fat transporter, carried by roughly half of people with Indigenous American ancestry and about one in ten in East Asia, and rare elsewhere. It is one of the clearest cases of archaic DNA shaping modern disease risk unevenly across populations.
| If you carry | What it means |
|---|---|
| No copies | Not inherited |
| One copy | Inherited from one parent |
| Two copies | Inherited from both parents |
| Ancestry group | T (the effect version) | |
|---|---|---|
| African | 0.3% | |
| American | 24.2% | |
| East Asian | 10.0% | |
| European | 1.7% | |
| South Asian | 0.4% |
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.
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