How Do I Get My DNA Test Kit?
There are various consumer DNA testing companies. Popular names include AncestryDNA, 23andMe, LivingDNA, AfricanAncestry, MyHeritage.
Each company has a unique DNA database. Generally, the larger the company’s database is, the more specific is its DNA test at pinpointing precisely from whence your ancestors originated.
Different companies analyze different DNA components. The component a particular DNA ancestry test analyzes is thus a critical factor to consider when tracing your DNA.
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- A Y-DNA test will, for instance, trace your parental lineage (women don’t have the chromosome Y).
- mtDNA tests, on the other hand, track a person’s maternal lineage (mtDNA stands for mitochondrion DNA which is inherited exclusively from one’s mother).
- To trace both sides of your ancestry, you’ll need to take an autosomal DNA test, but this test won’t take you as far back in time as the Y-DNA and mtDNA tests.
Therefore, it’s important to note that all DNA testing kits are not alike; neither can they cater to the needs of all communities. AfricanAncestry is, for example, solely focused on helping people of African descent trace their ancestral roots back to Africa.
How to Do A DNA Ancestry Test at Home
Zuri ordered her DNA testing kit online from ancestry.com. After following the online instructions on how to activate it, she put her saliva sample in a test tube, sealed it and put in a prepaid envelope.
The sample was then sent to a lab for analysis.
Through various genotyping techniques, researchers at a consumer DNA testing company like ancestry.com will analyze the sample you send and assemble a comprehensive report of your genetic makeup. They’ll then compare this report with a vast set of DNA samples in their database. In doing so, the researchers are then able to discover your ethnicity, geographic ancestry, family tree and genetic health markers.
Zuri’s results were out after about two months, and she was notified via email.
She found that she was 9.25% Bantu-speaking South African, 25% Bantu-speaking East African, 30% North European, 31.75% South African Khoisan!
To her, the results didn’t make sense at all.
“I couldn’t understand how I could be South African and European- and not be East African. So, I repeated the test using two more kits from different DNA-testing companies. The results were consistent, so I decided to dig deeper.”
