How to find your genetic ancestry or blood relatives

Find your genetic ancestry or blood relatives

How to find your genetic ancestry or blood relatives? We as human beings are all part of the human story, a history yet to be revealed in many ways. We know our ancestors migrated from their African homeland to populate the earth thousands of years ago, but from then on, there are a lot of questions still to be answered, like the role of the Crusades in dispersing genetic lineages across Europe and Asia.  Since the human genome was decoded, big projects are running so as to start answering these kind of questions on a macro level, and combined genetic ancestry test results from many people are being used by scientists.   Genetic ancestry testing is, at the same time, being offered to private individuals by several companies and organizations that also provide online forums and other services to allow people who have been tested to share and discuss their results with others.

How can genetic ancestry be helpful to you?

• to uncover your ethnic mix and get a generalized picture of your ancestry from a genetic perspective
• to discover distant relatives
• to get clues on where your ancestors might come from
• to trace your cultural roots
• to find new details about your unique family history

Perhaps you are planning a trip to Europe and you expect to take this opportunity to visit the homeland of your ancestors, and would like to check if you still have some relatives there you could eventually contact during your visit.  Or maybe you are planning to give someone in your family a very original wedding present –his/her own family story, so as to pass the legacy to the next generation. You may be in the middle of the process of making your family tree, and might have lost track of one of the branches.  Maybe you have not yet started, and have decided to gather some more information before you do.   Perhaps you just simply don´t know how to find your ancestors, as you do not have much information to make a beginning.  If any of the above applies to you, to find your genetic ancestry might be the answer. Your results could be a smart starting point for more family history research or can be a way to dig even deeper into the research previously done.

How to find your genetic ancestry?

• The easiest and more effective way is to run a genetic ancestry testing with a saliva sample that can be taken anonymously at home using a special kit.

Three types of genetic ancestry testing are commonly used for genealogy purposes:

• Y chromosome testing: it is used to check the male branch and can be performed just on men, as females do not have a Y chromosome. However, women can always recruit a male relative to have the test done. Y chromosome testing is often used to investigate questions such as whether two families with the same surname are related.
• Mitochondrial DNA testing: it is used to check the female ancestral branch.  As both males and females have mitochondrial DNA, which is passed on from their mothers, this type of testing can be used by either sex. Mitochondrial DNA testing can be useful because it preserves information about female ancestors that may be lost from the historical record because of the way surnames are often passed down.
• Single nucleotide polymorphismtesting: good for checking the overall ethnic background of an individual as this test evaluates large numbers of variations across a person’s entire genome. The results are compared with those of others who have taken the tests to provide an estimate of a person’s ethnic background.

Limitations of DNA testing and how to fill in the gaps:

Due to chromosome recombination events, some of your true relatives will not share any detectable DNA segment with you. This means that about  30% of your fifth cousins would be inaccessible to you no matter which company, algorithm, or website you use. While you do not share DNA with a large number of your 4th-5th cousins, you do share DNA with some of them. For example, you might not share DNA with your fourth cousin, but you might share your DNA with her brother. Of course, they both have a lot of DNA in common (just not the DNA that is common with you). So if you have the list of relatives for the cousin you share DNA with, you could add the brother you do not share DNA with to your list of relatives.  This way you can jump above missing DNA links in your family and get a larger number of relatives.

How can I get my DNA tested?

Once you have decided to test your DNA as part of your family history research, and which test type, the next consideration is which DNA testing company to use. There are three major direct-to-consumer DNA testing companies; all US based:

• AncestryDNA
• Family Tree DNA (FTDNA)
• 23andME

The top company is most likely ancestry.com.   You can order a kit and take a simple saliva test in your home.  Once mailed back, you will get your results by e-mail within 6-8 weeks.

• com gives you the possibility of checking your DNA against more than 700,000.00 genetic markers.

• When your results arrive, be open to surprises!!! com maps ethnicity going back multiple generations and provides insight into such possibilities as: what region of Europe are your ancestors from, or are you likely to have an East Asian, Indian American or African heritage. Your AncestryDNA results will include information about your ethnicity across 26 regions/ethnicities.

• Once you take your test, com searches the network of ancestryDNA members and identifies the people who share your DNA, thus you might find unknown relatives, some of which might even be living across your street.

As ancestry.com combines advanced DNA science with the world´s largest online family history records, it is a highly efficient resource at the time of helping you find your genetic ancestry.

By, Carmen Vazquez Sibils