Comparison and Customer Reviews of the Various Dna Testing Sites
Commercials abound for DNA testing services that volition help you larn where your ancestors came from or connect you with relatives. I've been interested in my family history for a long time. I knew basically where our roots were: the British Isles, Germany and Republic of hungary. But the ads tempted me to dive deeper.
Previous experience taught me that different genetic testing companies tin yield dissimilar results (SN: five/26/18, p. 28). And I knew that a visitor can match people just to relatives in its customer base, and then if I wanted to detect as many relatives equally possible, I would need to apply multiple companies. I sent my DNA to Living DNA, Family unit Tree DNA, 23andMe and AncestryDNA. I also bought the National Geographic Geno 2.0 app through the visitor Helix. Helix read, or sequenced, my DNA, then sent the data to National Geographic to clarify.
These companies analyze hundreds of thousands of natural Dna spelling variations chosen single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs. To estimate ethnic makeup, a company compares your overall SNP pattern with those of people from effectually the globe. SNP matches likewise help companies meet who in their database y'all're related to.
Some of the companies as well clarify a person'due south Y chromosome or mitochondrial Deoxyribonucleic acid. Y chromosome DNA traces a homo's paternal line. In contrast, mitochondrial DNA traces maternal heritage, since people inherit mitochondria, which generate energy for cells, simply from their mothers. Neither type of Dna changes that much over fourth dimension, so those tests usually tin't tell you much about recent ancestors.
Once I sent in DNA samples, my Web-based results arrived in only a few weeks. But my user feel, and results, were quite dissimilar for each company.
National Geographic Geno 2.0
At $199.95, National Geographic's test is the most expensive, yet the least useful. The results are generic, and the ethnicity categories are overly wide. My results say that 45 percentage of my heritage came from people living in southwestern Europe 500 to 10,000 years agone. That doesn't tell me much and doesn't reverberate what I know of my family history.
There's no relative matching, though Geno two.0 shows which historical "geniuses" may take shared your mitochondrial or Y chromosome Dna. I don't know how National Geographic knows about the mitochondria of Petrarch, Copernicus or Abraham Lincoln. And then I'm skeptical that I am actually related to those famous figures, even from the distance of 65,000 years, the concluding time nosotros supposedly had an ancestor in common. The service also calculated the percentage of Neandertal ancestry that I deport. I take geeky pride that one.five percentage of my DNA comes from Neandertals, topping the 1.3 pct boilerplate for Geno 2.0 customers.
Overall, Geno 2.0 has a squeamish presentation, just I learned more about my family history elsewhere. Since I bought the Geno 2.0 kit equally an app through Helix, I don't know if the kit purchased directly from National Geographic, which is candy past Family Tree Deoxyribonucleic acid, would yield different results.
Living Dna
Another expensive test ($159) came from Living DNA. When I saw the company's advertizing claiming to pinpoint exactly where in the British Isles a person's genetic roots stem from, I decided to requite it a go. The company highlights ethnicity on a world map, then lets y'all zoom in from the continent level. I found that 22.five percent of my heritage came from Lincolnshire in east-central England. I haven't yet traced whatsoever ancestors to Lincolnshire, just I did detect through much genealogical sleuthing that one of my sixth-great-grandfathers came from Aberdeen, Scotland. Living Dna says that three.1 percent of my DNA is from Aberdeenshire. Written narratives on the website provide a history of each reported region.
Using mitochondrial DNA and, if applicable, Y chromosome Deoxyribonucleic acid, the company tin can trace your maternal and paternal lines back to homo origins in Africa and show where and when your particular line probably branched off the original. My "motherline" probably arose in the Near East nineteen,000 to 26,000 years ago, Living Dna claims, and my ancestors were some of the offset people to enter Europe. In Feb, the visitor announced that it would soon launch a relative-matching service for its customers.
I'k not sure the service would be worth the price tag for people whose ancestry doesn't contain a strong British or Irish tilt, though Living DNA says information technology is working to improve ethnicity estimates in Germany and elsewhere.
Family Tree Dna
The near no-frills of the bunch is Family unit Tree DNA. For $79, "autosomal" testing looks for genetic variants on all of the chromosomes except the 10 and Y sexual practice chromosomes. Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA analysis costs extra.
Family Tree Dna allows a user to build a family tree, incorporating personal Deoxyribonucleic acid tests and matches from the site'southward relative-matching department. I establish more than 2,400 potential relatives. A chromosome viewer lets me come across exactly which bit of DNA I have in common with whatever detail relative, or with upwardly to five relatives at a fourth dimension. That feature too allows users to trace how they inherited DNA from a shared antecedent. But I found this tool difficult to use.
The website offers little explanation of results. For example, I was excited to see that my DNA was compared with that of ancient Europeans, including Ötzi the Iceman, who lived 5,300 years ago (SN: 9/17/16, p. 9). Family Tree Dna is the only company I tried that incorporates ancient Dna into its results and that characteristic was what convinced me endeavor this visitor. I did become a breakdown of how different groups — Stone Age hunter-gatherers, early farmers and "Metal Historic period Invaders" from the Eurasian steppes — contributed to my DNA. But when I saw Ötzi's dot on my ancestry map, it wasn't clear if that meant we share DNA or if the map was merely showing where he lived.
23andMe
23andMe ($99) offers one of the more than consummate packages of information. Most companies testify a map of ethnic heritage. 23andMe does, too, but also presents an interactive diagram of all of a person'due south chromosomes, indicating which portions carry a detail ethnic beginnings. Because my parents as well did 23andMe, I learned that my dad handed me a tiny scrap of chromosome 15 that carries western Asian and northern African heritage. My mom gave me the 0.iii percent of my Deoxyribonucleic acid that comes from the Balkans, in a single chunk on chromosome 7, which makes sense since her grandparents came from Hungary. Playing with the chromosomes is fun. But I question the accuracy of these results (come across my related article for more on why ancestry tests may miss the marker).
23andMe presents Neandertal heritage in terms of the number of genetic variants you carry. A family-and-friends scoreboard shows where y'all stack up. (I top my leaderboard with 296 Neandertal variants, more than than what 80 percentage of 23andMe customers have.) The study also explains what some of those Neandertal variants do, including ones linked to back hair, straight hair, height and whether you're probable to sneeze after eating dark chocolate. The company doesn't test for all possible Neandertal variants, including ones that have been linked to wellness (SN Online: 10/10/17; SN: 3/5/16, p. 18).
Similar Geno 2.0, 23andMe uses mitochondrial and Y chromosome Deoxyribonucleic acid to trace the migration patterns of a person's ancestors, from Africa to the present day.
Relative matching is both interesting and frustrating. I could see the people I match, how we might be related and compare our chromosomes. But 23andMe doesn't provide a style to build family trees to further explore these relationships.
AncestryDNA
AncestryDNA ($99) doesn't give the variety of information other companies do. But information technology has useful genealogical tools, provided you link your results to a family tree that you tin can build with help from historical records via a paid subscription to Ancestry.com.
One interesting characteristic of my heritage study was that it went beyond spots on the map in Europe to also show a region of the United states of america called "Northeastern States Settlers." A match to that category tells me that my ancestors who came from Europe probably initially settled in New England or around the Great Lakes. They did. One branch of my family tree fix roots in Massachusetts in the 1640s. Using nascence, death and immigrant records from Ancestry.com, I could build a timeline to show when and from where individual ancestors immigrated to the Usa.
AncestryDNA besides matches you with relatives, simply yous can but see how yous're related to those people if they have also chosen to make family copse.
A feature unique to AncestryDNA is called DNA circles. It shows connections between individuals and family groups who share Deoxyribonucleic acid with you lot. These circles also contain descendants of your ancestors who you don't directly share Dna with. Therefore, this characteristic allows y'all to extend relative matches beyond what traditional DNA matching can practice.
For instance, I am in a family group with my uncle and a cousin. We all share DNA with 24 other descendants of Samuel Pickerill, a drummer during the Revolutionary State of war. Pickerill has 42 other descendants with whom my family group doesn't share DNA. Those 42 Pickerill descendants happened to inherit different bits of DNA from Pickerill than my uncle, his cousin and I did. That sometimes happens because of the random nature of the rules of biology and genetics (for more than on those rules, check out this video).
Genealogy junkie
Although I've always been interested in family unit history, DNA testing has gotten me hooked on genealogy research.
23andMe and AncestryDNA were the most fun to utilise. 23andMe tin tell me whether a relative is on my mother'due south or father's side of the family unit. But then I have to become dorsum to AncestryDNA and comb through my family tree to learn how nosotros're really connected. DNA tin kick-first a genealogy hunt, simply combing through marriage certificates, armed forces rolls, demography records, immigration documents, one-time photographs and other records — which Ancestry.com can provide — is what really tells me who my ancestors were.
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Source: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/family-dna-ancestry-tests-review-comparison
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