I often wonder how many different reasons people are interested in taking a DNA test. My reason began shortly after I became addicted to genealogy and had built a family tree based on all the family groups sheets my Mom had written out. When I found out that DNA could assist in verifying cousins and possibly help discovering unknown relatives, it was incentive enough for me. You may be adopted and looking for birth parents, you may be worried about health issues and want to know if you are likely to inherit a certain gene and possible disease, you may have received a test kit for Christmas and your giver thinks you would like to know about your genetic family. There are more reason than I could ever think of, the bottom line is the more people that test, the bigger the database. There are so many people that get tested and then do absolutely nothing with it or loose interest after a short while. And for those of you that took the test and became interested in genealogy, welcome.

You may be watching TV and see a commercial about finding your grandfather who came to American from a foreign country. The commercial shows records such as 1930 census or a draft card registration. This commercial may generate an interest to test your DNA. You order a kit and submit your DNA kit and wait. You may notice that the company you ordered the kit from, offers a health study option. You think that it would be nice to know if you are susceptible to certain diseases. Most likely the test that you have ordered is a Autosomal test. So what does that mean?

Your spit or cheek swab is sent to a laboratory for analysis. For simplicity purposes, the lab uses chemicals and a computer to take your cell that was in the spit or swab and are able to extract the code that the Nucleotides have written.

Now, an important concept to be aware of is the Meiosis Recombination Process. Again for simplicity, when the sperm, from Dad fertilizes the egg, from Mom, the cell goes through a process call Recombination and you end up with DNA that is from both your parents. Another important concept to understand is that you have 22 pairs of autosomes chromosomes and then you have two sex chromosomes which are a little different that the other 22, more about that later.

So, whether you ordered your test from AncestryDNA, 23 and Me, FamilyTreeDNA, MyHeritage or LivingDNA, you are testing the DNA that you received from your parents 50% each, grandparents 25% four of them, 12.5% from eight great grandparents and I think you see the pattern. You really need to understand that by the time you go back about 6 generations, back to your 4th great grandparents (that’s 32 pairs of grand parents), you are not going to see much DNA that came from them. Plus you are going to start getting what it called “false positives”, which is positive through chance.

Now, let me be clear. I spend a lot of time looking at DNA matches that are possible 4th and 5th cousins, that is where my mysteries and brick walls are residing. The unit of measurement for DNA is a cM (centimorgan). In other words, as a general rule, the more cM’s you share with your match, the closer the relationship. These matches with a low cM value are going to require some effort on your part to validate the match.

Let’s assume that you received your results and it did trigger an interest in genealogy.

Ancestry.com will tell you what your ethnicity percentages are and give you a list of folks that share DNA with you. It will be up to you to build a family tree. In the preferences page is where you set whether you want to make your tree public or private. Ancestry.com is a company that you can subscribe to and research millions of records and can associate with your family tree.

MyHeritage.com is another company that you can test with and if you subscribe, you will be able to search records. They do have a chromosome browser.

23andMe.com has actually been around for a long time and perhaps you have tested at their company. They do not offer any record searches. They also have a chromosome browser.

FamilyTreeDNA.com is a company that has been around for many years. They do not offer record research. At the present time the are the best company for testing not only Autosomal DNA (family finder), but also will test for YDNA and Mitochondrial, more on that in another part of this site.

LivingDNA.com is another company that does not offer record research. They are new to me and so far they have not found any matches to me. I will have to update this as I get more familiar with what they offer. The have a chromosome browser.

Gedmatch.com is a company that you can upload your test results from others companies and they will find shared DNA matches from these other companies. This company does not offer any record searches. This company also offers extra tools for a a subscription fee.