Spencer wells photographer

These days, he leads Insitome , a Helix partner with three innovative ancestry products currently available in the Helix Store : Neanderthal , Metabolism , and Regional Ancestry. We had a chance to speak with Dr. Wells to learn more about his company, his career, and the trends that have him excited this year. Honestly, I never set out to create the consumer genomics industry when we launched the Genographic Project in [Wells was the founder and director of the Genographic Project from ].

With my film Journey of Man, which chronicled our efforts to decipher ancient human migration patterns, we did a global promotion with the National Geographic Channel in late where we tested celebrities in key markets around the world for some of the Y-chromosome markers we discuss in the film—people like Jackie Chan in Hong Kong, for instance.

The testing was done in an academic lab in the US, and was a long, tedious process. This gave me an inkling that there might be a market for a reliable consumer genetic ancestry test, and as we were planning Genographic in and , that became one of the three core components of the project, along with the basic field research and the Legacy Fund.

However, we never expected it to sell as well as it did. In fact, just before I stepped out on stage at National Geographic headquarters in April of to announce the project to the world, the then-CEO of National Geographic John Fahey told me not to over-sell the public participation component of the project—he said we would be lucky to sell a thousand of them over the next five years, because, after all, who would want to pay to have their DNA tested?

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Well, we sold 10, that first day, hit , by the end of that year, and suddenly the industry was off and running. As of last year, 12 million people had tested their DNA through a consumer genomics company. All of our products are aimed at telling you about various aspects of your ancestry—where in the world your ancestors come from Regional Ancestry , how our ancient trysts with Neanderthals and Denisovans impact your genome and traits you have today Neanderthal , or how lifestyle changes with the development of agriculture around 10, years ago affect how you metabolize food and drink today Metabolism.

Most ancestry products focus on DNA as a passive connection between generations—a way to decipher relatedness, either to people today or people who lived in the distant past. In my opinion, the most exciting field of human population genetics these days is ancient DNA aDNA , and there are several important aDNA papers that are going to be published this year.

In terms of events, I always look forward to the annual American Society of Human Genetics conference. Understanding the rest of your genetic characteristics is based in large part on your ancestry. You can find it on iTunes, Google Play, or Stitcher.