Ancestral DNA

For Christmas, I bought my wife a DNA test to discover her ancestry. The results were fascinating and so she reciprocated to ascertain what my heritage was.

I always thought that her ancestry would be of more interest and so it proved. Her mother was Nicaraguan and her father is English. My ancestry is more prosaic; mostly Irish but one English strand. The results of both were therefore enlightening.

My wife:

Irish, Scottish and Welsh: 27.6%
Scandinavian 11.1%
English 1.8%
Eastern European 5.8%
Italian 2.1%
Indigenous Central American 38.4%
North African 6.6%
Nigerian 6.6%

Mine

Irish Scottish Welsh 61.3%
English 31.6%
Finnish 3.1%
Middle Eastern 4.0%

Surprised by how much English (and not a little disappointed). Delighted with the Middle Eastern and Finnish.

One's great great great great great grandparents each give you under 1% of your genes and so, on the basis of a generation every 25 years on average, I had a Middle Eastern ancestor somewhere in the period 1800-1850.

The Nigerian ancestry of my wife presumably comes from the slave trade. What is curious with hers is the paucity of the Englishness of her father, the chunk of Viking (of which oddly I appear to have none) and the lack of Spanish.

All in all, it means that our kids have a wonderfully diverse gene pool.

Don't know about genetics but family tree-wise mine seems pretty dull in comparison. It's Scottish > English > Farkinaussie

How much was the test and how soon before we see the evil DNA test operators cloning swarms of Evil WornCleat soldiers?

Did mine recently, knew about the Indian but not the French (have since dug around the family tree and found it). Most of my UK is Scottish. Just logged on and have an update on the Asian. I'm 0.2% Sri Lankan, 0.1 Malayali (keralan mountain folk) and 1% still broadly no idea. Forgot I also got 0.3% Nigerian too.

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I’d love all the gammons I work with to do the test just to see their mindless rage when they discover they’re not 100% West Drayton/Ruislip as far back as Magna Carta.
How much do these tests cost btw? My family is prone to throwing out some fairly random traits from generation to generation so would be interesting to know what’s in the mix.

I did health and ancestry on 23andme which was £116 on special offer. Think just Ancestry is £70ish

As a good old fashioned bastard with no idea of my parentage whatsoever, I don't think I want a genetic test, I would probably fail. I would like to discover a diverse ethnic mix, but could possibly discover the 99.3% English Brexiteer Twat gene and be forced to conform to my genotype and become an arsehole as well as a bastard. One of the best things about bastardy is being able to answer 'fucked if I know' to the 'is there a family history of' question.

Do you tell these companies your real name, or use a pseudonym?

They want your real name. They check your DNA with various crime agencies. A number of cold crimes have been solved as a result.

A friend’s sister had hers done and as a consequence, they discovered that they had an elder brother, the result of a one night stand their father had had in the war.

I think on 23andme you can opt out of Jo Public being able to look you up

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/aay8av/people_whose_families_have_been_destroyed_by/

But don't you sign over the right for them to sell the info on? A relatives work place gave out tests as Christmas presents which made another relative, who works with data security, give her very stern instructions never to take the test, unless she was willing to gamble with her ability to get insurance and similar in the future. Might not happen, but he sees it as a real risk.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/sep/18/your-fathers-not-your-father-when-dna-tests-reveal-more-than-you-bargained-for

Good read.

On the plus side it caught the Golden State Killer.

You can opt out of your DNA being used in research when you sign up which is where they sell it on. On the website you can opt out of anyone being able to look at how much matching DNA you have.

A number of cold crimes have been solved as a result.

That's me out then

There's a forum on there and a guy posted that he was a 52% genetic match with a guy on there so does this make them his son. Turns out he sperm donated in the 80s and it completely hadn't occurred to him that this might come up.

But don't you sign over the right for them to sell the info on?

Even if you don't, it will be sold on when the company is sold, or goes into administration, or there's just a common-or-garden data breach.

My friend did it and he was in the 99th percentile for Neanderthal DNA. Really does explain a lot.

A 'friend'?

Ha. Gutted.