The way Uncle Grayal told it many years later, his father sat him down on the front porch of their Hardee County home and let him in on a well-guarded family secret.
"He told him, "Your grandmother was a beautiful Creek Indian princess,"' Jean Polk, Grayal's niece, recalled recently.
But not everyone accepted the revelation as gospel, including Grayal's sister, Fanny. She was more interested in finding proof that ancestors had fought British rule so she could join the Daughters of the American Revolution.
"Aunt Fanny said, "There's not a bit of truth in that,"' recalled Polk, a retired educator. "For some people in the family, it was beneath them to be Indian or part Indian."
Now Polk and other relatives think they have evidence that bolsters Uncle Grayal's story. It comes from a controversial DNA test sold by a biotechnology firm housed in a former church meeting hall in downtown Sarasota.
For $158, DNA Print Genomics will analyze the DNA in the cells from a cheek swab. It says it can tell your ancestral mixture of four major groups: African, European, American Indian and east Asian.
Polk's test, for example, concluded her ancestry was 86 percent European and 14 percent Indian, prompting both surprise and knowing nods in the family.
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The test, Ancestry By DNA, is among the first of its kind, thanks to recent advances in the understanding of human genes.
The company gained national attention this year when the test was used in the search for a suspected serial killer in Louisiana. Authorities had been looking for a white man, but several weeks after DNA Print Genomics analyzed DNA samples provided by investigators, authorities arrested an African-American. Authorities won't say how crucial a role the test played.
Tony Frudakis, founder and lead scientist of DNA Print Genomics, said the test gives customers greater understanding of their origins. It also dismantles racism by showing race is more complex than the neat boxes on U.S. Census forms.
But some genetics experts say that the test is a scam, that it couldn't possibly yield the results it claims for the price it costs and that it could be used to try to bolster racist claims.
"The company will be able to provide you with an estimate, but it won't be much better than looking at the guy," said Stephen J. O'Brien, chief of the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity at the National Cancer Institute in Frederick, Md. "I'm sure it won't have much use to the recipient."
O'Brien and others say there are more important medical reasons to use genetic information.
Frudakis said his company's ultimate goal is to develop tests for more effective drug treatment by matching patients with drugs based on their genetic makeup. He balks at the critics.
"If you're a racist, you may be afraid to take a test like this," Frudakis said.
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Frudakis, 36, a married father of three who holds a doctoral degree in molecular and cell biology from the University of California, started his company in 1999 with roughly $1-million of his and other investors' money. A Tampa venture capital company later put in $2.5-million, he said. In December, the company received an $8-million commitment from a California investment group.
The company, whose over-the-counter shares closed Friday at 6 cents, set out to find ways for doctors to prescribe medication based on a person's genes, including working on a University of Miami study of women's responses to an ovarian cancer drug.
But as the company did research, it struggled financially. "Out of desperation," Frudakis said, it began selling the Ancestry By DNA test.
In conjunction with a Pennsylvania State University assistant professor of molecular anthropology, the company's scientists identified "ancestry informative markers" in human DNA, Frudakis said.
Frudakis said they couldn't have done it without the Human Genome Project, a federal initiative started in 1990 to identify all 30,000 genes in human DNA, which ultimately determines hereditary characteristics. The "ancestry informative markers" the company identified are what help determine the proportional ancestry, Frudakis said.
More than 3,000 people across the country, mostly genealogy buffs, have taken the test, he said. But he said there are other uses, including law enforcement and forensics.
Frudakis said the case of the suspected serial killer in Louisiana disturbed him. So he offered to test DNA for investigators, who were hunting for a man suspected of killing as many as six women between September 2001 and March 2003. Among them was a Louisiana State University graduate student from Tampa.
Police confirm they sent Frudakis 21 already-extracted DNA samples. They didn't tell the company which came from one of the crime scenes, Frudakis said. That sample showed the person was of 85 percent African ancestry and 15 percent Indian ancestry, he said.
"I had no idea the suspect was an African-American," Frudakis said. "Prior to that, they were focused on (whites)."
A short time later, police arrested Derrick Todd Lee, a 35-year-old African-American, who has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder.
Police officers and prosecutors wouldn't comment on the case or exactly what role the test played. Lee's attorney, Michael Mitchell, said he might question the use of the test in court.
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Stephen O'Brien, the National Cancer Institute laboratory chief, said there's plenty to question. He called the test a scam.
Different ethnic groups carry a "proportion" of distinctive genes, but they represent a tiny fraction of the overall variation.
"Put simply, there is 10 to 20 times more genetic differences between any two people within one race, say Caucasian, than there are between the racial groups," O'Brien said.
In theory, he said, it is possible to create such a test, but it would be quite expensive. At DNA Print Genomics' price, he said, it would have to be "woefully inaccurate."
O'Brien also said he thought the results could be used "for no good."
"You need look no further than the apartheid rules of South Africa," he said. "If that regime had quantitative estimators of ethnicity, they would have exploited these to serve a racist agenda and discrimination."
Joann Boughman, executive vice president of the American Society of Human Genetics - an organization of 8,000 researchers, clinicians and genetic counselors - said it's unlikely the results are very accurate. Also, she expressed concern about genetic information in general being used to discriminate, such as in employment.
"The more genes are tested, the greater the accuracy, and for $158, they can't be testing very many genes," she said.
Such talk rankles Frudakis. He said that the test has a margin of error of a few percentage points, but that he and his colleagues have confidence in it.
"They haven't seen the data," Frudakis said. "Most of the people that say that haven't worked with markers as powerful as ours and haven't done the (research) to define the magnitude of the error."
Not only is the test reliable, Frudakis said, but it also shows that nature is more complicated than the boxes found on U.S. Census forms, which he called "a joke."
"We're not identical clones, but there are people trying to convince us we're identical clones," Frudakis said. "They want to de-emphasize the differences. My response is that the differences should be emphasized because diversity is a beautiful thing. In a population, nature builds in diversity. ... You appreciate that there's diversity, but you don't use it to hurt people.
"Racism is about putting people in boxes and drawing conclusions. Our test shows quite clearly that most people are much better described in terms of their ancestral mix, so it's hard to put people into boxes."
In its consent form, the company warns customers that results are "for your enjoyment" and "may or may not fulfill the requirements for legal admissibility."
Enjoyment drew Helen Arroyo Hoverman, 42, of Duluth, Ga., to the test. She was starting a scrapbook for her 6-month-old daughter, Hannah, when she learned about the test from a Sunday morning news program. She and her husband, Chris, 45, planned to put the results of their tests alongside lockets of Helen's mother's hair, newspaper clippings and other keepsakes in the scrapbook.
Mrs. Hoverman, the daughter of Puerto Rican parents, was "interested in knowing where the dark skin came from."
"The test actually told me I'm like 48 or 49 percent African," she said. "That explains why my skin is darker. It's comforting to find out where my ancestors came from."
Mrs. Hoverman, who is awaiting results of her daughter's ancestry test, plans to take another DNA test offered by a different company that also has ventured into ancestry analysis. For $349, African-American Ancestry of Silver Spring, Md., will analyze a person's DNA to determine the region of African ancestry.
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For Jean Polk, the Hardee County woman, and her relatives, taking the test offered by DNA Print Genomics has become something of a family project. So far, a dozen family members have taken the test.
They immediately look for any percentage of Indian ancestry to bolster - or dispute - claims of a Creek Indian princess in the family lineage, Polk said. Creek Indians once heavily populated Georgia.
Now Polk's daughter Jeanie Walker is set on contacting some Creek Indians to see whether she can find any family connection.
Polk's Aunt Fanny, who disputed any claims of Indian ancestors, is dead.
"I don't know what she would have said about the test results," Polk said. "We were excited. It proved we were on the right track to finding out. We haven't got the absolute truth."
