The basics of DNA testing for genealogists
By Kitty Munson Cooper
Blogging at blog.kittycooper.com
98% shared
DNA with him
99.7% with me
are NOT
the same as
personal genome tests
Forensic DNA tests
23 pairs of chromosomes
Image of painted (SKY) chromosomes - Courtesy of DeWitt Stetten, Jr., Museum of Medical Research
Three types of personal DNA tests
Y test for father's father's line
mtDNA for mother's mother's line
Autosomal DNA test for all your ancestors
SNP - Single Nucleotide Polymorphism
a DNA mutation where a single letter chang3s
STRs are short tandem repeats
An extra copy is made of a sequence of DNA
An extra copy is made of a sequence of DNA
An extra copy is made of a sequence of DNA
An extra copy is made of a sequence of DNA
An extra copy is made of a sequence of DNA
2 Types of Y DNA Tests
Deep ancestry - haplogroup
More recent ancestry - surname studies
Y Haplogroups
By Chakazul, via Wikimedia Commons [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]
Y Haplogroups
By Chakazul, via Wikimedia Commons [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)
Mitochondria under the microscope
Image Source: Dartmouth EM images, http://remf.dartmouth.edu/imagesindex.html
By User:Maulucioni via Wikimedia Commons [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]
Mitochondrial Haplogroups
By User:Maulucioni via Wikimedia Commons [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]
Mitochondrial Haplogroups
Three types of DNA tests
Autosomal DNA test looks at the DNA
from ALL your ancestors
used by permission from http://stevemorse.org/genetealogy/dna.htm
Autosomal Inheritance by Steve Morse
Inheritance from 8 g-grandparents, courtesy of Angie Bush
Make a DNA chart from grandparents at https://www.legacytree.com/inheritance
Relationship Chart from ISOGG wiki http://www.isogg.org/wiki/Autosomal_DNA_statistics
Your autosomal test data
Why Do A DNA Test?
- Am I who I think I am?
- Ancestry Composition, as expected?
- Find some distant cousins
- Break a Genealogical Brick Wall
from Cece Moore's blog at http://www.yourgeneticgenealogist.com/2015/02/switched-at-birth-unravelling-century_27.html
My brother at 23andme.com
My brother at Ancestry.com
My brother at FamilyTreeDNA.com
My brother at GEDmatch.com
My brother at DNA.land
Newly found cousins may have family stories and photos
My 3rd 1R sent me photos of my gg-grandparents
http://blog.kittycooper.com/2013/03/we-have-found-our-ancestor-lars-monsen/
Where to test? It depends ...
- 23andme.com
- Ancestry.com
- FamilyTreeDNA.com
http://blog.kittycooper.com/dna-testing/
The Big Three:
New DNA Test Companies
- MyHeritage
- LivingDNA
http://blog.kittycooper.com/other-blogs-and-resources/downloads/
Ancestry DNA is the easiest to use and it finds how you are related to a match
Ancestry has Genetic Communities
Family Tree DNA accepts transfers of data from other testing sites
ftDNA has a Chromosome Browser for Matches
23andme also has a Chromosome Browser for your admix
and you can download the segment data for your ancestry composition
MyHeritage DNA Cousin Matching
Living DNA has a much finer breakdown of ancestral areas in the UK
Health Results: Upload to Promethease.com for $5.00.
For more cousin matches upload to
- GEDmatch.com
- DNA.land
- MyHeritage.com
Also GEDmatch and DNA.land will give you more ancestry composition results
DNA.land ancestry composition for me and my brother
DNA Testing Basics
By Kitty Cooper
DNA Testing Basics
How personal genome tests can help a genealogist
