Heritage Album

Family genetics DNA test?

I'm really interested to know my family tree and where I come from. What does a family genetics DNA test show exactly? What did you think of your results? And does it show the family line from both the mother and the father's family or just one? Thanks in advance and any other info on this is very welcome! =]

Public Comments

1. There are 3 types of DNA. Y goes from father to son only. Mitochondrial goes from mother to both sons and daughters but only the daughters pass it on to their children. Y & Mitochondrial make up the 2 sex chromosomes, one from each parent and they both go back in a straight line virtually unchanged. Autosomal make up the other 44, 22 from each parent. You get Autosomal 50-50 from both parents but when you get back to your grandparents it won't be 25-25-25-25. You get 50% from your paternal grandparents and 50% from your maternal grandparents but it will not be an even breakdown between grandmother and grandfather on both sides. How you inherited the bias will not necessarily be how your siblings inherited it unless you have an identical twin. Y & Mitochondrial are used in genealogy to match a person with other family trees. If you have a full brother, he could have both done and it probably would save you a little money. Now, understand both of them will not give you your total ancestry. For instance, you have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great grandparents and 16 great great grandparents and it doubles up each generation you go back. In each generation, a male would get his Y from only 1 and his Mitochondrial from only 1 and a female would get her Mitochondrial from only 1. In other words if you got back to your 16 great great grandparents, if a male was tested for both it would leave out 14 of them. If a female is tested it would leave out 15 of them. However, if you use them in conjunction with research and are successful at matching yourself with other family trees, you will no doubt discover some of the left out people. The oldest company doing this type of testing and the one with the largest data base is http://www.FamilyTreeDNA.Com. When you go into their website, if you go under "Feedback" there is a way you can email them and ask questions. Now some people just like to get a view of the ethnicities in their family background. Y & Mitochondrial are not any good for this because they leave out too many people. Autosomal is the best to use. Autosomal isn't use for family research because it is a too complicated, at least at present. There is one company in the U.S. that I know of that will take your Autosomal DNA and match you with population groups throughout the world. They will not tell you that you are 1/2 of something, 1/4 of something else and 1/4 of another something else. That is no doubt impossible as DNA crosses national, racial and ethnic boundaries and there are no pure nationalities, races or ethnicities. What they will do is show you your top matches in descending order beginning with the top. They have over 900 batches of 100-150 samples. The company that does this type of testing is http://www.DNATribes.Com When you go into their website there is a way you can email them and ask questions if you go under "Feedback." FamilyTreeDNA does do Autusomal testing but they will no longer send you an analysis. I had to send my results from them to DNATribes. Some companies that only do Y & Mitochondrial advertises they will help you "discover your deep ancestral roots." It is true in those 2 lines only they will show you the origin of your nomadic ancestors going back thousands of years but you come from a vast myriad of family lines. Now, I asked DNATribes if my sister with whom I share both parents had the same Autosomal test would her results be the same and they replied: "Two siblings will each obtain unique results. Family members do typically share some regional or ethnic genetic affiliations, but in some cases matches can vary substantially between siblings." I would assume this is because how we inherited our DNA from our grandparents can differ greatly. Here are a couple of more links describing DNA: http://www.smgf.org/pages/how_it_works.jspx http://www.pa.msu.edu/~sciencet/ask_st/060293.html