DNA Testing? For ancestry information

[Tohru]

Has anyone did one of these? If so, who with and which company? Seems like there are several, but not sure which one is the best.

 

TIA

[AmandaVT]

My parents and DH's mom used the one from Ancestry.com. All the results were very accurate based on what we each knew about family backgrounds. I was able to get the one for DH's mom for Christmas for $30 off too which I thought was a great deal!

[RootAnn]

My mom did one through Ancestry.com. She was upset for days afterwards that she's not 100% Irish like she always claimed she was.   :smilielol5:

 

So, YMMV!

[Guest]

I would really like to do this. I think my sisters would probably like to do it, but my mom would be against it, which is not to suggest she has to know. I believe, from characteristics of several family members in my mother's lineage, that there is Native American blood "hidden" in the past.

[gardenmom5]

I attended a class on this in november, but don't have my notes in front of me.

 

to be useable for matching lines - you need to get more markers, and rna for female lines.  if you have a brother or close male cousin, you can do a "y" for tracing male lines.

 

if you have an idea of a person in a line you "might" be related to, you can use that information to compare and see if you really are related.  especially helpful if you have a particularly difficult line.

 

 

[Mom-ninja.]

I want to test my dh to see how much neanderthal DNA he has. 

[maize]

I've been actively pursuing DNA genealogy for the past few months.

 

What is it you are wanting to know? If you want to know where your ancestors came from in the recent past (as in, where they lived a few hundred, not thousands, of years ago) 23andMe seems to be the most accurate. It is also, however, twice as expensive at this time as other autosomal DNA services ($199 rather than about $99). For figuring out who is related to you within the past few generations and sharing genealogy information (what I am mostly doing) there are two other options: AncestryDNA.com and Family Tree DNA. Family Tree DNA is kind of the gold standard right now for tools available, it is really a great company and focuses primarily on genealogical tools. In addition to autosomal DNA tests that match you to 1st to 6th or so cousins, FTDNA offers Y-DNA (you need a male from your line for this) and mitochondrial testing. These can help you verify who is in your direct maternal and paternal lines. Ancestry doesn't have all the tools that FTDNA has, but you can if you want kill two birds with one stone by testing with Ancestry then transferring the data to FTDNA for an additional $39. The thing with Ancestry is that it can help you tie in to the hundreds of thousands of people with family trees already in place.

 

If you've got money to spare, test with all three :) Better yet, if your parents or even grandparents are still around have them test.

 

If you can only afford 1 place, FTDNA is the best. You can also take your data from whichever company you test with and upload it to a free service called GEDMatch, where you can make comparisons with people from any other company.

 

This is my current obsession, I'm trying to break through a brick wall in my family tree and DNA tracing has given us our best leads yet. I'm happy to talk more if you have specific questions.

[maize]

I want to test my dh to see how much neanderthal DNA he has. 

:lol:  :lol:  :lol:

 

Ya think he has a lot?

 

(most people are 2-3%)

 

ETA unless all their ancestors came from Africa. Folks in Africa never mixed with neanderthals

Edited February 1, 2016 by maize

[Guest]

Just fyi:

 

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/23andme-is-terrifying-but-not-for-the-reasons-the-fda-thinks/

 

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/534006/23andmes-new-formula-patient-consent/

 

I was going to get it to confirm whether or not the man I call "Dad" is biologically related to me but after reading this, I decided that it didn't matter that much to either of us.

Edited February 1, 2016 by Guest

[Farrar]

Dh did it for a lark. I think he did 23 and me... isn't that the name of it?

 

I felt pretty dubious about the results though. Some of the things in dh's ancestry which are super documented didn't show up. Supposedly as they get larger and larger pools of people it will get more and more accurate. He did it several years ago now when it was brand new.

[MrsWeasley]

My mother was adopted in a 50s style closed adoption, and I would love love love to know more about my ancestry from that side. I had thought I would do 23 and Me if I ever scraped together the funds, but now I'm not sure.

[jenn-]

Has anyone did one of these? If so, who with and which company? Seems like there are several, but not sure which one is the best.

 

TIA

 

I just got my results back from Ancestry.com and I was a little surprised with my results.  We thought for sure that since my mom's family has been here forever and a day that there would be a mix in there.  The fact they probably came from England/Ireland is strong.  I was also shocked to see how little the Portuguese was played in (turns out the family had been from Italy and had only moved to Portugal shortly before moving here).  Needless to say, my tops were Italy/Greece (same marker) and Great Britian/Ireland (same marker).

 

I've also uploaded their raw data into one of the "diagnostic" software programs and found a bit of interesting information.  First off, I have the gene that flat out states that 77% of people with this gene are lactose intolerant.  Now I can get all those family members who think I am being hard to understand that I really can't have dairy.  I also came up with a MTHFR marker that I need to pursue with my doctor.  I have a cousin that was diagnosed with something on the same order and it could explain a lot of my issues.  I take everything else with a grain of salt. I did pass on to my little sister that several markers said our chance for Type 2 diabetes is higher than average (my dad and several of his siblings and great grandma all have/had it).

 

Now I am on to the hunt for relatives.  Gedmatch has come up with a bunch of them with my top match being a cousin (3rd I think) that I am 100% sure I'm related to.  Since I know he is a male in my family tree (albeit distant), can I use him to narrow down the maternal/paternal stuff?  My dad and his dad were first or second cousins.

[Jean in Newcastle]

Does anyone know how good these tests are for non-European ancestry? 

[TravelingChris]

WE haven't done it,  Only dh may be a little bit interesting and only if the test is more specific which it doesn't seem to be.  Without that, he would be slavic and germanic.  Depending on how far back it goes, I would simply be slavic or Polish,

[Pippen]

I would really like to do this. I think my sisters would probably like to do it, but my mom would be against it, which is not to suggest she has to know. I believe, from characteristics of several family members in my mother's lineage, that there is Native American blood "hidden" in the past.

 

My mom has facial features that might be taken for Native American if you didn't know any different. She came to the US as a young girl--her family is German and the lineage well-documented for recent generations. One of her aunts had facial features that always made me think she'd walked straight off the Mongolian Steppe.

[Spryte]

My mother was adopted in a 50s style closed adoption, and I would love love love to know more about my ancestry from that side. I had thought I would do 23 and Me if I ever scraped together the funds, but now I'm not sure.

 

DH used Family Tree DNA, and was doing it for finding info after a closed adoption.  He's since reunited with birth family and everything we got from Family Tree DNA was right on the money.

 

He was able to connect with distant cousins and had a definite idea of his surname long before finding birth family to verify.  

 

He's part of a surname group, and knows more about his history than the birth family.

 

Love Family Tree DNA.

 

On the other hand, my doc has done genetic testing on me, and is now having me do 23 and Me.  Different purposes, different companies have different strengths.

[Spryte]

Does anyone know how good these tests are for non-European ancestry? 

 

They seem to be improving with more and more people getting tested.  

 

I can't speak to the other companies, but with Family Tree DNA, DH gets notified every time there's a match.  He's been an active member there since his first test with them 10 years ago.  They just keep updating his profile and sending more info.  

 

I don't know about the other companies, if you get results once and that's it, but if they are anything like FTDNA, then the results keep improving with time and more data being collected.

[wapiti]

We did 23andme for one of my kids for reasons unrelated to ancestry.  The ancestry portion is something I consider pure entertainment - a little interesting, a little fun.  The top 3-5 countries were surprisingly accurate.

 

The other info was much more valuable (genetic defects related to methylation).  I just went to the site yesterday to order kits for a couple more of my kids and I'm disappointed that the price doubled from what it was last spring.  I may still do it; haven't decided.

[RoughCollie]

23andme's prices doubled when the FDA approved some additional services from them: http://gizmodo.com/23andme-is-back-in-the-genetic-testing-business-with-fd-1737917276

 

I am 0% Native American.  The entire family on my dad's side is aghast.  All of the cousins have been repeatedly told that we are 1/8 Native American because one of our parents is 1/4 and our grandma was 1/2 Native American. 

 

My  mother has assured me that my dad is my biological father.   :hurray:  I am pretty certain that my first cousins do not believe that. :mellow: 

 

[Spryte]

23andme's prices doubled when the FDA approved some additional services from them: http://gizmodo.com/23andme-is-back-in-the-genetic-testing-business-with-fd-1737917276

 

I am 0% Native American. The entire family on my dad's side is aghast. All of the cousins have been repeatedly told that we are 1/8 Native American because one of our parents is 1/4 and our grandma was 1/2 Native American.

 

My mother has assured me that my dad is my biological father. :hurray: I am pretty certain that my first cousins do not believe that. :mellow:

:)

 

So many people are told that, and claim that. It drives my Native friends crazy. Everyone's the descendant of a native princess! ...they finally started asking to see tribal membership cards, only slightly jokingly. I mean, it's cool, but not everyone can be Native. :)

 

DH's results were surprising to his birthfamily, too.

[maize]

23andme's prices doubled when the FDA approved some additional services from them: http://gizmodo.com/23andme-is-back-in-the-genetic-testing-business-with-fd-1737917276

 

I am 0% Native American. The entire family on my dad's side is aghast. All of the cousins have been repeatedly told that we are 1/8 Native American because one of our parents is 1/4 and our grandma was 1/2 Native American.

 

My mother has assured me that my dad is my biological father. :hurray: I am pretty certain that my first cousins do not believe that. :mellow:

Thing is, with the way DNA is inherited it is in fact possible to have a Native American great-great grandparent from whom you did not actually inherit DNA. You only inherited 1/2 of each parent's DNA, they only inherited 1/2 of their parent's...with half getting dropped off with each generation you lose some genes entirely. It is also entirely possible that the NA ancestor was them self of mixed heritage--that is not at all uncommon.

 

And then, these tests don't sequence the entire genome! All 0% really means is that they didn't find identifiably NA markets in the sequences they tested.

Edited February 1, 2016 by maize

[maize]

My family tests turned up both Native American and sub Saharan African that we weren't aware of, though we strongly suspected mixed heritage. NA didn't turn up in my test, but it did in my dad's and even more so in my grandma's.

Edited February 1, 2016 by maize

[MaeFlowers]

23andme's prices doubled when the FDA approved some additional services from them: http://gizmodo.com/23andme-is-back-in-the-genetic-testing-business-with-fd-1737917276

 

I am 0% Native American. The entire family on my dad's side is aghast. All of the cousins have been repeatedly told that we are 1/8 Native American because one of our parents is 1/4 and our grandma was 1/2 Native American.

 

My mother has assured me that my dad is my biological father. :hurray: I am pretty certain that my first cousins do not believe that. :mellow:

I took the test and came back something like 1% Native American. I was surprised how little showed up. My Dad said it might be because we are Cherokee (we're not sure). According to something he watched recently, Cherokee are actually Europeans.

[Katy]

nm

Edited July 22, 2016 by Katy

[MaeFlowers]

My family tests turned up both Native American and sub Saharan African that we weren't aware of, though we strongly suspected mixed heritage. NA didn't turn up in my test, but it did in my dad's and even more so in my grandma's.

I'm curious about this. I am waiting for my dad to get his test done to see his percentage. I wish we had been able to get my grandfather tested before he passed. But anyway, how does it show up in your dad and grandmother but not you? Have they simply not tested enough native Americans to know the markers?

Edited February 1, 2016 by MaeFlowers

[maize]

I'm curious about this. I am waiting for my dad to get his test done to see his percentage. I wish we had been able to get my grandfather tested before he passed. But anyway, how does it show up in your dad and grandmother but not you? Have they simply not tested enough native Americans to know the markers?

Half if my dad's genes weren't passed on to me; half of my grandma's weren't passed on to him.

 

We have had four generations tested, including three of my grandparents, both my parents, myself, and two of my children. I can compare my grandmother and my daughter chromosome by chromosome--my kids only inherit about 12.5 percent (this varies and can be higher or lower, but 12.5 would be average) from any one great-grandparent. The rest comes from the other great-grandparents. So if grandma was 3% NA, she could have passed on only 1% of that to my dad and he could have passed on none to me.

And again, we only know the % that is in identifiable markers that were tested.

[maize]

When a parent/child pair are tested the results become significantly more accurate (when a single individual is tested the program can't really identify which genes belong together on the same chromosome rather than being separated on sister chromosomes, this can lead it to think DNA bits are in a sequence with each other when they are not, or thinking they are not in sequence when they are)

 

Phasing is the term that describes comparing a child's genotype with a parent's to improve accuracy.

[Katy]

Also they aren't sequencing all of your genes.  Only a small fraction of them.  It could turn out that your native ancestry is in the genes not tested.

[gardenmom5]

I want to test my dh to see how much neanderthal DNA he has. 

 

there's a guy at church who could almost do the commercials as a neanderthal.  (he's very smart, and is majoring in some healthcare field).  but, he has a very heavy bone structure above his eyes.

[RoughCollie]

So, if my siblings get tested, they could have Native American genes, even though I do not?  I don't know much about all this genetic stuff.  When I was in school, the focus was entirely on George Mendel and his peas. I think I'd better learn more about this.

 

I did theorize to my cousins that since I inherited half of dad's genes, it is possible that the Native American genes were in the other half.  But, you know, I plucked this theory out of thin air ... there is no knowledge backing it.

[GoodGrief]

Thing is, with the way DNA is inherited it is in fact possible to have a Native American great-great grandparent from whom you did not actually inherit DNA. You only inherited 1/2 of each parent's DNA, they only inherited 1/2 of their parent's...with half getting dropped off with each generation you lose some genes entirely. It is also entirely possible that the NA ancestor was them self of mixed heritage--that is not at all uncommon.

 

And then, these tests don't sequence the entire genome! All 0% really means is that they didn't find identifiably NA markets in the sequences they tested.

 

Yes, that is absolutely true. I did this through one of the services, and mine came back as 40% Irish. My background is fairly well documented, and only my paternal grandmother was Irish (her parents immigrated from Ireland.) So, technically, I am only 25% Irish. But apparently, the majority of the genes I got from my dad were my grandmother's genes.

 

And though people roll their eyes at the claims of Native American ancestry, it is actually very, very common. Particularly in the Southeast, where intermarriage would generally result in assimilation.

 

[maize]

So, if my siblings get tested, they could have Native American genes, even though I do not? I don't know much about all this genetic stuff. When I was in school, the focus was entirely on George Mendel and his peas. I think I'd better learn more about this.

 

I did theorize to my cousins that since I inherited half of dad's genes, it is possible that the Native American genes were in the other half. But, you know, I plucked this theory out of thin air ... there is no knowledge backing it.

Yep.

 

One of my sisters got my mom's West African genes, but I didn't. I did get my dad's West African genes though--we can tell which is which because they are on different chromosomes. That sister also got my dad's NA genes.

 

Now, for NO native American to show up in your profile would be unlikely if your parent really has a high percentage. Thing is a significant proportion of Native Americans have European ancestors in the mix--intermingling went both ways. So a person who considers them self 100% native by heritage may only be, say, half NA by DNA. And would therefor pass on less to their own descendants.

 

I took a look this morning at my family's profiles, my kids compared to their great-grandmothers; the percentage of shared DNA ranges from 9 to 16%.

Edited February 2, 2016 by maize

[stephanier.1765]

My parents and I have from Ancestory.com. According to my data, I'm 3% European Jewish but neither of my parents had Jewish listed in their data. Strange. All the rest added up though. If you look at my father and you look at me, you can tell I am definitely his daughter. I look nothing like my mother. So it really wasn't much of a surprise when most of my DNA matched up to my dad's.

[maize]

My parents and I have from Ancestory.com. According to my data, I'm 3% European Jewish but neither of my parents had Jewish listed in their data. Strange. All the rest added up though. If you look at my father and you look at me, you can tell I am definitely his daughter. I look nothing like my mother. So it really wasn't much of a surprise when most of my DNA matched up to my dad's.

Well, 50% of your DNA does come from your mom; one chromosome in each pair.

 

You may have inherited traits with greater dominance in the areas of appearance from your dad, but you got the exact same amount of DNA from each.

[PeacefulChaos]

My MIL did it recently with Ancestry.com.  She did hers and my FILs - his came back with some surprising (though not so much so when you thought about it) Middle Eastern/North African lineage.  I haven't seen his actual results.  His dad was Mennonite and with their last name I'll admit I was sort of expecting 100% German.  :D  ;)  But then, looking at him, and his complexion and coloring, it isn't surprising.  Just wasn't something we'd thought of before.  

 

It's sort of fun to see.

 

I've always wanted to do mine.  I had originally thought 23andme but now I'm wondering if I shouldn't do the other one PPs are recommending.  I don't know my dad/ don't know who he is at all, so I'm a little curious about that 'unknown' half of my ancestry.  :)  My maiden name (my mom's maiden name) is 100% Dutch, so I'm expecting a lot of English/Dutch/German.  But then who knows, there could be something surprising.  :D 

 

random story: A few years ago when I was planning my trip to Thailand, an acquaintance in a moms group asked if I wanted to go to Thailand and liked K-pop because I'm 'part Asian'.  (Because, you know, Korea and Thailand are the same thing?  :lol: )  I just looked at her like she was nuts and pointed to my blonde hair and blue eyes and was like, 'What part of this looks like I'm from Thailand or Korea to you?'  I'm not saying there's no possibility of a tiny percentage, but it's clearly not a big enough part of my heritage that heritage alone would make me want to visit or like their music.  :lol: :lol:

 

But then, I'd LOL if I really did get a percentage - even a teensy tiny one - from Eastern Asia somewhere.  :lol: