Mike Jones, an American, always believed that he and Sam Jones, who lives in Europe, shared the same great-grandfather. Mike, an avid rooter, persuaded Sam to take a DNA test to prove it.
Surprise! Mike and Sam are not related. Because family lore had it that great-grandpa, er, got around, Mike persuaded another man to take a DNA test to answer some nagging lineage questions. This man, unmistakably Japanese, dutifully swabbed his cheek and sent the sample to the same lab. Viola! He and Mike share a common paternal ancestor, most likely the wayward great-granddaddy.
Mike and Sam Jones are pseudonyms. The story is true, says Diahan Southard, lead analyst for Relative Genetics (www.relativegenetics.com) the Utah lab that conducted the tests. The lab specializes in family studies, especially those trying to prove a common paternal ancestor. "Female testing is harder and usually less informative," she said in a telephone interview. Tests cost about $195 per person.
DNA tests can prove lineage. That's a given. But before you leap into a lab, be sure you're ready to accept the results.
"One of the biggest problems I run into is when the genealogy doesn't turn out "right,' " Southard said. "People expect the tests to turn out a specific way, and sometimes they don't. When they find out they are not related, they turn on the lab and say we did something incorrectly. Of course, many times the tests turn out the way they expect them to and the client is elated."
Sometimes clients end up disappointed because they think they are taking one kind of DNA test when they are taking another. There's a big difference between genealogical and anthropological DNA testing, for example. Both may be of interest to genealogy enthusiasts. But the results are distinctively different.
The Jones men took a genealogical DNA test that was intended to prove specific family relationships. By contrast, an anthropological DNA test tells you only which continents your ancestors came from.
DNAPrint Genomics Inc. of Sarasota (www.ancestrybyDNA.com) conducts anthropological testing. For $158 and a swab from your cheek, you can find out whether you have American Indian, African, Asian or European ancestry and in what proportions. For many people, that's information worth paying for. The test won't confirm that grandpa was Polish and great-grandma was Irish. That technology doesn't exist.
"Interestingly, less than 80 percent of the people who self-identify as 100 percent Caucasian actually are," said Dr. Matt Thomas, DNAPrint's senior scientist. "And sometimes the DNA has become so diluted over generations that a specific ethnicity no longer shows up."
Say an American Indian married a European 150 years ago. Their offspring married only full-blooded Europeans. Each succeeding generation did the same. Over time the Indian DNA would no longer be present.
Some people are also astonished to learn that one sibling's DNA may be quite different from another's. "You get 23 chromosomes from your mother and 23 from your father," Thomas said. "The result is a random mix. Your genetic makeup could be up to 20 percent different from your siblings'."
Thus, you and your sister could get tested, and one of you might have a small proportion of Asian ancestry and the other won't.
DNAPrint owns its proprietary database, said Phil Brooks, the company's marketing director. The firm's samples, gathered from various regions by Dr. Mark Shriver of the Pennsylvania State University, are broad enough to enable the lab to determine one's ancestry. Shriver's test results, for example, show that he's 68 percent European, 16 percent American Indian and 16 percent African.
The theories behind DNA are far too complicated for me to comprehend, much less explain in simple terms. I can tell you that the time to start asking questions is before you plunk down the bucks and get your cheek swabbed.
- Donna Murray Allen welcomes your questions about genealogy and will respond to those of general interest. Write to her c/o Floridian, St. Petersburg Times, P.O. Box 1121, St. Petersburg, FL 33731, or e-mail her at rootscolumn@yahoo.com You can read her column online at www.sptimes.com Type Donna Murray Allen in the search box. Or visit her Web site: www.rootsdetective.com
[Last modified April 3, 2003, 00:46:37]
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