Have you ever traced your ancestral DNA?

I'm thinking of purchasing a DNA test kit and tracing both sides of my ancestral lines. Has anybody done that? I found that there are many sites out there today selling these kits. Has anybody here done this? Was it worth the money for the amount of information you received? From which company did you purchase your test kit? Thank you so much for your help.

I did. I used AncestrybyDNA for the reasoning that they check the x-chromosomes (vs the paternal only y-chromosome & the maternal only mitochondrial DNA) which is passed on by both parents. I paid somewhere about $200 if I remember right and for me it was worth it. It settled the questions of my family's "legends".

However, both my mom and husband did the same test and they did not come back with what their faily lore had said and they both were upset, my husband moreso since he had been raised his whole life in the way of his supposed family history. He has stated many times he wished he had not done it.

Now a warning here, AncestrybyDNA.com can only guarantee results to within 5% +/-3% which means anything below 1/8 might not show up as they only check the genes that are "turned on". It has been several years since I have done this so it might be different now. At the time they had checked on 78 or so x-chromosomes, whereas when my husband took it they were well above that.

As for the info that comes back it's not broken down into a lot of different categories, about 5, I think. Right now they have a time trying to get the European DNA separated as there has been so much migration in the past millenium. I don't know how much they've accomplished in the past few years though. So you might want to do some research into it.

Hope this helps.

Yes I did... Here were my results so you can get an idea of what to expect...



Results for your Y-chromosome SNP test are now back. You can see your results online.

We found you to be positive at the following markers in the first screening panel:
M168
M89
M9
M45
M207
M343

But were negative in this first panel:
M96
M304
M175 (expected deletion)
M122


Because of this, we tested you further on an additional panel.

We found you to be positive at:
P25
M269

But negative at:
M126 (expected deletion)
M153
M18
M222
M335
M37
M65
M73
P297
P66
SRY-2627
U106/M405
U152


This would place you within R1b3* (YCC 2002 nomenclature) and R1b1b2* (YCC 2008 nomenclature). Note that our reports are currently in the 2002 nomenclature.

We now have PhD-written reports placed online covering approx. 95% of results. Please click on the blue R1b3* hyperlink on your Personal Page to watch and read your online report, or click on the PDF icon to download the new PDF version which you can share with others.


You may wish to log on a look at the following pages:
www.dnaheritage.com...
www.dnaheritage.com...
www.dnaheritage.com...
www.dnaheritage.com...


We would also like to take this opportunity to remind you to update your Ybase account if you have one. Confirmed haplogroups combined with a large number of STR results (such as from our 43-marker STR test) are of value to academics and amateurs who study human migrations. It is only with new information can others in this field help to grow our understanding of haplogroups and haplotype clustering.



Kind Regards,
Alastair


Alastair Greenshields
Principal
DNA Heritage
www.dnaheritage.com

reply to post by gazerstar


Unfortunatly for me it is almost impossible. I say this cause on 1 side of my family my great grandparents are African american possible Native American who made my grand mom & Greek & Italian escaping the Germans to the U.S. who mad my grand dad. My other side my great grandparents are African American possible some Native American made my grand mom and grand dad. Yea I gots some Unique blood flowin in me from around the EARTH.

I have only done my family tree I have never heard of a test like this before. I would be interested in this myself.

reply to post by willow1d


So I was told I was German and Sicilian and this test would basically tell me if that is true or not? I would be able to find out my genetic ancestry, is that what this is? Sorry I have just never heard of this. I am very curious about my mom's side. There is some confusion on info about my great great grandparents. Everyone has a different story.

I looked at the site you used but half the site says error not found. The prices seemed steep. Is that a reputable site? Its just weird to me to send my blood to someone to test it and trust them they havent done anything else with it.

Originally posted by mblahnikluver
reply to post by willow1d

 

So I was told I was German and Sicilian and this test would basically tell me if that is true or not?

If you do one of the European DNA tests it'll give you some basic info. Here's the URL for this....
www.ancestrybydna.com...

I would be able to find out my genetic ancestry, is that what this is? Sorry I have just never heard of this. I am very curious about my mom's side. There is some confusion on info about my great great grandparents. Everyone has a different story.

Yeah, this is the fun of the genealogy research! Trying to figure out who told who what and why! You'll find that most of the stories are not true or are well embellished. The best bet is when you find cousins who haven't had contact with each other for like a century and then see what stories match. That's how I was able to discern whether I wanted to pay for this test or not.

Okay, as far as the different tests...if you are male, then you can do the y-chromosome test. Now this will ONLY cover what fathers gave to the sons. The mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) will ONLY cover what mother gave to children, thus this test will work for both men and women.

Now the tests that AncestrybyDNA does checks the x-chromosomes, which is handed down to the children from both the mother and the father. Remember, the chromosome sets are XY for men and XX for women.

I looked at the site you used but half the site says error not found. The prices seemed steep. Is that a reputable site? Its just weird to me to send my blood to someone to test it and trust them they havent done anything else with it.

Yeah, whoever has updated their site has done a terrible job!! And yes, I did some research on the company before I gave them my money. I found nothing that discredited them and I believe their results are allowed in court which shows that they're legit.

Oh, you don't send them blood. They will send you a swab that you rub on the inside of your cheek and send back.

If you go here www.ancestrybydna.com... you can click on the links that are in the main body. The links on the side are the ones that are really screwed up. If you go to the "manual" you'll get all the technical stuff that will help answer some of the questions on how they do this.

Here's the URL for the FAQs
www.ancestrybydna.com...