I am considering doing one of the DNA tests to find more about my ancestry. I seem to recall a discussion on this site and some warnings regarding using certain services due to info sharing. I could not find any threads with a search that went into these details. Any suggestions about the better places to use?

Was it this thread?

https://sigforum.com/eve/forums...935/m/8680062414/p/1

Read the consent supplied with the kit and decide for yourself. I am in genomic medicine and have seen 23and.... testing facility. The personal information and data are anonymized. There could always be a breach, but the computers that actually store the sequencing data are not "on line".

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Originally posted by Palm:
Was it this thread?

https://sigforum.com/eve/forums...935/m/8680062414/p/1

Yes, that is the one. Thank you.

quote:

Originally posted by Censored:
Read the consent supplied with the kit and decide for yourself. I am in genomic medicine and have seen 23and.... testing facility. The personal information and data are anonymized. There could always be a breach, but the computers that actually store the sequencing data are not "on line".

@Censored:
Thanks for the info. Since you are in the field I have another question. A few years ago my doctor took a cheek swab for DNA to determine treatment for an ongoing infection I was suffering from. Would that data be available to me if I requested it? Would it also likely have genetic info for genealogy or strictly be about the illness?

My niece’s son has become obsessed with genealogy and as the oldest male survivor in the family I have been sucked into the whole thing.
I agreed to have the Family Finder and Y-DNA sequence done (by Family Tree).

It was a waste of my money since it just confirmed what I already knew (55% British Isles, 45% Central European).
You may find out of course that what you think you know isn’t so; many people were evidently told that they were related to Sitting Bull or Pocahontas. DNA sequencing may put an end to that illusion.

If you know nothing about your family at all, you will have difficulty getting started, and only by a miracle will you get a DNA hit that leads you to close relatives.

Example; One of my Great Grandfathers emigrated from England. This was in the 1840’s; his age is a bit uncertain and his date of arrival very uncertain. My Y-DNA sequence might have found a match somewhere, but it did not. Evidently, assuming I have surviving relatives in GB, they have not seen fit to have the rather expensive DNA testing done.

If you know your grandparents names and years of birth and death or can find out, you can do a paper search through Ancestry (dot) com, WikiTree, or Family Search (dot) org and find out more and find it more quickly.
In fact the more you know the quicker it will go. I was fortunate that a distant cousin had done a lot of work tracing the ancestry of one of my Great, Great Grandfathers and I knew enough about my Great Grand Parents to get a running start.

It’s very likely as you go back in time that you will find others are digging in the same areas and you can use the information they have developed.

Most of my searches have gone rather quickly and ended up with ancestral lines going back to immigrants in the 1600 and 1700s all but one in the Boston and CT areas.

You can expect to find yourself blocked in an attempt to trace ancestors back in GB or the Continent.

Well, the way I look at this whole DNA/Ancestry thing is this: If you go back 50 generations you will have 1,125,899,906,842,624 direct ancestors. Yup, that's 1,125 trillion plus about another 900 billion.

Why stop there? Go back 100 generations and you will have 1,267,650,600,228,229,401,496,703,205,376. That's quite a few.

Maybe it's true that we all are related to everyone? Maybe it's true that we all came from Adam and Eve?

If not, I guess we all just came from an amoeba in the ocean. (looking at some people I could almost believe that!)

The International Society of Genetic Genealogy is a good place to get started, especially their wiki. https://isogg.org

Here's their chart comparing what the various companies offer: https://isogg.org/wiki/Autosom...ing_comparison_chart

I did the Family Finder autosomal test and got the results, and have since also done Ancestry's and 23-and-Me, but don't have those results yet.

I'm not worried about what they do with my DNA, and have uploaded my DNA data to several other genomics websites (such as GedMatch) and used their tools.

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Originally posted by bettysnephew:

quote:

Originally posted by Censored:
Read the consent supplied with the kit and decide for yourself. I am in genomic medicine and have seen 23and.... testing facility. The personal information and data are anonymized. There could always be a breach, but the computers that actually store the sequencing data are not "on line".

@Censored:
Thanks for the info. Since you are in the field I have another question. A few years ago my doctor took a cheek swab for DNA to determine treatment for an ongoing infection I was suffering from. Would that data be available to me if I requested it? Would it also likely have genetic info for genealogy or strictly be about the illness?

The residual DNA was either exhausted during testing or tossed within a few weeks of the testing being complete. They probably used a few probes to look for a bug or two, so I doubt there would any left for genealogy.

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Originally posted by RichardC:

I bet you will see more trucks like this or even Walmart testing in less than 5 years.

Do they have a test for gender identity? Oh, wait.

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Originally posted by Yellow Jacket:
Well, the way I look at this whole DNA/Ancestry thing is this: If you go back 50 generations you will have 1,125,899,906,842,624 direct ancestors. Yup, that's 1,125 trillion plus about another 900 billion.

Why stop there? Go back 100 generations and you will have 1,267,650,600,228,229,401,496,703,205,376. That's quite a few.

Maybe it's true that we all are related to everyone? Maybe it's true that we all came from Adam and Eve?

If not, I guess we all just came from an amoeba in the ocean. (looking at some people I could almost believe that!)

Couple of things to think about in relationship to your numbers:

There have only been about 108 billion humans ever born: LINK

To get to the numbers you offer, you must assume nobody ever has children with anybody that they're related to, no matter how distant the relationship must be, ie: Adam and Eve's children didn't have to intermarry, as God must've given them brand-new never-born (like Adam and Eve) mates.

One hundred eight billion is still a staggeringly large number. Untying the relationship knot between that number of people is a HUGE undertaking.

Thanks,

Sap

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Originally posted by Censored:

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Originally posted by RichardC:

I bet you will see more trucks like this or even Walmart testing in less than 5 years.

They should just back that van up to the Cook County Family Court Center.

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Originally posted by snoris:

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Originally posted by Censored:

quote:

Originally posted by RichardC:

I bet you will see more trucks like this or even Walmart testing in less than 5 years.

They should just back that van up to the Cook County Family Court Center.

Houston, Dallas, etc. too