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OT: DNA Testing/Family Tree

zerostepdrama's picture

Can anyone recommend a good DNA,Family Tree kit?

DH does not know who his biological father is. There was a man who supposedly was his bio father but a DNA test was done when DH turned 18 and he said all he remembers of it is the man calling him and telling him he is not his kid and hanging up.

DH's mom was a lady of the streets to put it kindly. She had DH when she was 16, pregnant at 15 and was the black sheep of her family. DH has 5 siblings and my guess is that none of them have the same father and will never know who their father is.

One of DH's sisters recently did the DNA testing as she was curious as to what her full background was. She always thought she was bi-racial- white and African American. She gets the DNA test and finds out she isn't African American at all but actually Latina and white. It was very devastating for her to find this out.

DH and I got to talking and he said he is curious as to what his background is. I want to order a DNA test that will give him his background.

I want to get one though that matches your DNA with any relatives that are in the DNA database. I know it's a long shot but he wants to try.

Any recommendations?

Thanks!

Comments

SacrificialLamb's picture

If your DH's goal is to locate a relative, I would recommend the test that has the most users that he could possibly match up with. I don't know which one that would be, but I would suspect it is Ancestry. Your DH may want to do both tests since a potential matched relative may have done other test.

23 and me has medical info and can also tell you if you have neanderthal DNA (a silly joke in my family). It also seems to get more specific about where you are from, where Ancestry.com is more regional. They both match up with relatives but Ancestry can link to people you already have in your family tree (but if you don't know who your father is, that wouldn't exist in the first place) and you can see other's family trees and how it links up to yours.

The results can be surprising. I found out I am more German than my SM is Italian, who moved here from Italy.

Is DH's mother still living? A friend of mine was adopted and knew who her bio mother was. Her bio mother refused to tell her info about her father. My friend told her she was going to do a DNA test to get answers, and her bio mother told her some harsh truths.

Another friend found out dad was not his bio dad. You have to be prepared that you might not like what you find out.

zerostepdrama's picture

Yes she's still living. DH said after he told her his "father" said he wasn't his father, she told him, yes he was. LOL. She probably has no idea. She likes to pretend that she wasn't a big ho. I'm sure she doesn't know for sure who any of her kids fathers are.

DH never saw the actual DNA results from the man who he thought was his father. This man is Greek. The only thing that DH has is a name and general location. I can actually see some Greek in DH. So not 100% sure that this man isn't DH's father. I'm hoping at age 15 that DH's mom wasn't THAT big of a ho that there are that many men out there that could be DH's father.

I'll order a test and see what happens.

Veritas's picture

If, for any reason, you want to understand your health genetics better, I suggest 23andMe. They have recently made some changes but I still use them in my practice.

You don't need to run the more expensive "medical" version, just need the cheaper version of 23andMe.

Why is this important? I use genetics in my practice to help understand how to restore function to the body. Genes run fast or slow and are impacted by other gene pathways. 23andMe offers raw data that can be run through my software to separate and analyze the genes. Most others, such as Ancestry DNA, have raw data but no programs, of which I am aware, accept the data for upload. They just are not set up to run the info the way it is structured.

So anyway, for you or anyone else looking to utilize their info in this additional way, 23andMe is the company to use.