How do I choose the best Ancestry DNA company?
Someone I know is interested in this and I want to get a test kit for them for a gift. There are many companies out there including DAN Ancestry Project and DNA Tribes. Does anyone have experience with any of these or others good or bad?
Thanks,
Nile.
What are you trying to accomplish?
There are 3 types of DNA.
Y is passed from father to son.
Mitochondrial is passed from mother to both sons and daughters but only the daughters pass it on to their children.
Most of your DNA is Autosomal which you get 50-50 from both parents. However, when you get back to your grandparents it will not be 25-25-25-25. Here is information I received to a question I asked on the Biology Board.
“Your mother’s egg contributes one set of 22 autosomes and one sex chromosome (an X). Your father’s sperm contributes the other set of 22 autosomes, and another sex chromosome (either an X or a Y).”
“Where the 50-50 part breaks down is when you pass on your DNA to your children. Each of your children will get half their DNA from you, but they won’t necessarily get an equal mix of what you inherited from your parents. They could inherit a more from your mother, through you, and less from your father, or vice versa.”
“Another way to look at it: you inherited 50% of your autosomal DNA from each parent, but you didn’t necessarily inherit exactly 25% from each grandparent. Your maternal grandparents contributed exactly 50% in total, but it could be biased in favor of either your maternal grandmother or your maternal grandfather. Same goes for your paternal grandparents.”
Source(s) PHD in Molecular Biology.
Now, if you are involved in family history, Y & Mitochondrial can be helpful as a genealogy tool to match yourself with other family trees. However understand that it represents a very tiny part of your ancestry.
You have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great grandparents, 16 great great grandparents and it doubles each generation you go back. In each generation you get your Y from only one person and your Mitochondrial from only one person. If you get back to your 16 great great grandparents, having both Y & Mitochondrial done will leave out 14 of them. However, if you are successful at matching yourself with another’s family tree, you will no doubt discover some of the left out people. One company that only uses Y & Mitochondrial advertises that 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. However, you come from a vast myriad of family lines.
The oldest company using Y & Mitochondrial is
http://www.FamilyTreeDNA.com
Now to use Autosomal for Genealogy purposes is far more complicated. However, there is one company that I know of that will take your Autosomal DNA and match you with population groups throughout the world. That company is
http://www.dnatribes.com/
Now how accurate is it. I am not an expert but I saw in my top 20 ethnicities that I already knew about in my family history. I can see if more than one company does the same type of testing and analysis the results might vary as one might have population samples the other one didn’t.
FamilyTreeDNA does do Autosomal testing but will not provide you with an analysis. I had to send my results from them to DNATribes.
I asked DNATribes is 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 got futher information from the source on the Biology Boards and this is what I received:
“When you take one of those DNA tests, which markers they find depend on which ones you inherited through your mother and father, and that will be different between you and your siblings (assuming no identical twins). If one of your grandparents is Dutch, and another is Polish, you might happen to inherit more markers that the test considers NW Eur., and your sister might happen to inherit more that are considered E Eur. In most cases, that will just be a random chance. Also, just because you have more markers that the test considers NW Eur, doesn’t necessarily mean you really are “more” NW Eur. in any real sense.”
I also asked DNATribes if they could break down my results by each parent and they replied:
“To isolate each parent’s genetic contribution in each case, it is necessary to test at least one parent as well.”
I just want you to know what you are buying when you get a DNA test done.
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