…is a DNA test kit
So… if that’s you this year, if what you really want for Christmas is a DNA test kit … which one do you get?
If The Legal Genealogist could get everybody who has asked that question in the last few weeks to pony up just $5 a head to the Preserve the Pensions fund, we’d be way ahead in digitizing those War of 1812 pensions.
But because I can’t begin to answer a kazillion questions one by one that all ask the same thing, I’m going to review what I would do, if what I really wanted for Christmas was a DNA test kit.1
Before I do, though, let’s review the basics:
YDNA is the type of DNA found in the male gender-determinative Y chromosome that only men have.2 It gets passed from a man only to his sons and from his sons only to his grandsons and from his grandsons only to his great grandsons and so on, with few changes down the generations.3
Mitochondrial DNA — mtDNA — is the kind of DNA we all have that serves as the energy producer for the cells in our bodies.4 It gets passed from a mother to all of her children — male and female — but only her daughters can pass it on to her grandchildren and so on, also with few changes down the generations.5
And autosomal DNA is the kind of DNA we all inherit from both of our parents6 in a mix that changes, in a random pattern, in every generation in a process called recombination.7 It’s really useful for finding cousins who share some portion of DNA with us with whom we can then share research efforts.8
So… what test this Christmas?9
If your budget tops out around $70: Choose the most critical male test candidate from a line where you have questions that a YDNA test may be able to solve — the last living son of a son of a son, for example — and bank his DNA with a 12-marker YDNA test from Family Tree DNA. It’s $59 (plus $9.95 shipping).
You won’t find this 12-marker test on the products page. You can only get it by ordering through a surname project (for example, the Smith or Jones surname project) — and there’s a search page for all surname projects at the Family Tree DNA website here. And if you can’t find a surname project, then you can order through the “Project Pending” Group Project and you can still get the test for that $59 price plus shipping.
Now, don’t expect to do a lot with this one test: 12 markers really isn’t enough to work with genealogically. But what you’ve done by ordering that test is guard against irreparable loss: there will almost always be a whole bunch of DNA left over and banked for the time when you can afford to do more testing — either more YDNA markers, or YDNA plus autosomal.
If your budget is around $80: Choose the most critical female test candidate from a line where you have questions that an mtDNA test may be able to solve — the last living daughter of a daughter of a daughter — and bank her DNA with an mtDNA-plus test from Family Tree DNA. It’s $69 (plus $9.95 shipping).
As with the lowest-level YDNA test, this low-level mitochondrial DNA test really isn’t enough to work with genealogically. But — as with that YDNA test — ordering this test will bank a whole bunch of DNA for the time when you can afford to do more testing — either the full mitochondrial sequence or autosomal testing.
If your budget is around $100: If you don’t have a really pressing question that YDNA or mtDNA might answer, or if your most pressing question is one where you could use some help from as-yet-unknown cousins, opt for an autosomal DNA test. There are two available right now, on sale, for this price point: at both AncestryDNA and at Family Tree DNA, it’s $89 plus $9.95 shipping if you’re in the US.
There are pluses and minuses to each company. A big plus if you test with AncestryDNA is that any family tree you have online at Ancestry gets matched up to anyone else who’s DNA-tested there and has a tree, so you get hints to where your common ancestor may be. You’ll also be able to transfer the raw data (a text file) over to Family Tree DNA and get into that database for only an additional $39. A big minus is that you have to maintain at least a DNA insights subscription (currently $49 a year) or you won’t get all of the benefits of the matching system at Ancestry. You also can’t do YDNA or mtDNA testing there.
A big plus at Family Tree DNA is that it’s one-stop-shopping and one-time-fee based. You can do all of the testing of all three types of DNA in one place and, once you pay for the test, there aren’t any additional costs. It also offers excellent tools for analyzing your results. A big minus is that you won’t get the automatic tree-matching so figuring out where you and a DNA cousin match may require more work.
If your budget is around $140: You want to get that autosomal test done and get into both the AncestryDNA and Family Tree DNA databases. So start by testing with AncestryDNA for that $89 price plus $9.95 shipping. The minute you get your results, download the raw data (it’s just a file that you’ll be able to download to your computer) and then upload it over at Family Tree DNA. It’s called an autosomal transfer in the product list, and though there’s a free version most of the data is locked in that version. So either get four other people to transfer their data (in which case yours is unlocked for free) or pony up the $39 and get it unlocked immediately. That puts you into two terrific pools of potential DNA cousins.
If your budget is around $150 and you’re mostly into genealogy: Instead of doing the YDNA 12-marker test to bank DNA against the day when you can afford to do more markers, go right ahead, choose the most critical male test candidate from a line where you have questions that a YDNA test may be able to solve — that last living son of a son of a son — and order a 37-marker YDNA test from Family Tree DNA. It’s on sale right now for $139 (plus $9.95 shipping).
At the 37-marker level, there’s a lot of good genealogical evidence that comes from a YDNA test: decent matching is possible at that level (at 12 markers, some men match just about the whole world, but by 37 markers, it starts to get into manageable numbers), and YDNA testing can help confirm — or call into question — a surname. It’s a great test for testing theories and the sale price makes it hard to beat. Plus, if you know folks who’ve already tested with Family Tree DNA, they may be willing to part with a coupon to bring the sale price down even more.
If your budget is around $150 and you’re a science geek: If you really want to be on the cutting edge of citizen science, for $149.95 with free standard shipping, you can test with National Geographic’s Geno 2.0 Next Generation Genographic Project. It will tell you your mtDNA haplogroup (where in the human family tree your direct maternal line began) and, if you’re male, your YDNA haplogroup (where in the human family tree your direct paternal line began). It’ll give you some insights into your deep ancestral origins. It’s not terribly useful for genealogy by itself, but it really is a whole lot of fun. In addition, very soon you’ll be able to transfer the data from that Geno 2.0 Next Generation test to Family Tree DNA through the autosomal transfer and then you will be able to use the data to help find and work with cousins.
If money is no object: I’m single, reasonably healthy and have all my own teeth. No? Oh, all right. Seriously, if money is no object, do ’em all. Get YDNA tests for a direct male-line descendant of every ancestral line you know of. Get autosomal DNA tests for everybody you can, and without fail test every single solitary family member you can afford to test who’s in a generation older than your own. Your parents or your aunts and uncles are better test candidates than you are. If you have living grandparents, get them tested immediately if not sooner. Go ahead and get full mitochondrial sequences done for your maternal lines. Give the Geno 2.0 Next Generation project your DNA to help out with citizen science.
Bottom line: you can’t take your money with you … but your relatives can die and take their DNA to the grave and, with it, the best chance you may have to answer some of your most difficult family history mysteries.
Go ahead. Get a DNA test kit — or a bunch of ’em — for Christmas.10
SOURCES
Image: Remix from OpenClipArt.org (Christmas ribbon by uwesch and Christmas Ornament by algotruneman).
- What I really want for Christmas is a documented direct-male-line descendant of any one of the men named Faure who emigrated to Manakin Town, Virginia, in 1700, arriving on the ship, the Mary and Ann. Just one. Surnamed Faure or Fore or Ford. Come on, there has to be one out there who has a rock solid paper trail back to Manakin Town… ↩
- ISOGG Wiki (http://www.isogg.org/wiki), “Y chromosome,” rev. 27 Nov 2015. ↩
- Ibid., “Y chromosome DNA tests,” rev. 13 Aug 2015. ↩
- “What is mitochondrial DNA?,” Genetics Home Reference Handbook, National Library of Medicine, US Department of Health (http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/handbook : accessed 12 Dec 2015). ↩
- ISOGG Wiki (http://www.isogg.org/wiki), “Mitochondrial DNA tests,” rev. 15 Nov 2015. ↩
- Ibid., “Autosomal DNA,” rev. 6 Nov 2015. ↩
- Ibid., “Recombination,” rev. 25 Aug 2015. ↩
- See Judy G. Russell, “Autosomal DNA testing,” National Genealogical Society Magazine, October-December 2011, 38-43. ↩
- And of course, in the spirit of ecumenicalism, I would note that you can gift a DNA kit whether you celebrate Christmas or Hannukah or Kwanzaa or no religious or ethnic type of celebration at all. You can gift it just because you’re alive and can afford it. So when I use the term “Christmas” here, read it as inclusive, okay? ↩
- Or just because you’re alive and can afford it. Just do it. ↩
A very nice gift giving guide, Judy.
How would the 23andMe products compare?
Louis, there is only one 23andMe product, and because its entire reporting system is in flux, I can’t recommend it at all at the moment. See this post, “Now… and not now, as to why.
2 years ago my dad gave me a big check for Christmas–I used a bunch of it in testing myself and several other relatives at FTDNA and I’ve enjoyed learning the results. This sale season, I decided to use the sales and coupons and I’ve upgraded 3 of the Y tests I had at 37 to 67, and I got new tests for a few relatives willing to help. too. DNA testing created a real surprise for part of my family when we discovered a NPE back in 1863, and this was found only when my 2 Boatright male testers did not match all those other Boatrights in the project, though our genealogy charts showed we should be related. More digging and I found that that gr-gr-grandma had sued for divorce while her husband was in the Civil War, though she later dismissed the suit and those 2 things taken together, showed me the truth. One of my cousins is still bereft, as she’d spent 30 years amassing genealogy info on that Boatright line. I keep telling her to pick another line and concentrate on them, now. : )
As genealogists, we should all be happy when we get a whole new line to play with!! (Then again… 🙂 )
Oh man..now you have me thinking about Y testing all my lines..THANKS!! LOL
You’re welcome! 🙂
I’ve been doing exactly as you recommend, Judy, testing all the 90+ people of my parents’ generation that I can (siblings, cousins, 2nd cousins). I’ve started with autosomal (to make sure that they really are related to me) and then down some Y-chromosome and one mtDNA. In two cases I wasn’t able to do the second test because “there is insufficient DNA” and by this time the testees were both deceased.
So my advice in testing elderly relatives is to monitor (or get another younger person to monitor) the scraping process for the elderly so that you get a good sample that you can use again later.
One other thing to consider with the elderly relatives is asking FTDNA to send extra swabs — that gives you the best chance for having enough sample left when the time comes.
True I ordered Y, MT and family finder for my dad sent in the two vials and the only results I received was the Y and FF so they sent me a extra kit and I asked for one more so I had four vials to swab him since I live in NY and he is in SC I was very sad/mad so I figured the extra would help me out. So I just sent them off on my last day visiting down there, fingers crossed!
Fingers, toes, and…! 🙂
You can just ask for the extra swabs? Will they send them free? I have kits for my 87-year-old parents to test at Christmas!
You’re best off calling FTDNA to check all the details, Amanda. There may be a small additional charge, but it’d sure be worth it to make sure you had enough samples to use for all the tests you want to do.
I was very disappointed in my ancestry matches. It seems like they depend too much on family trees. Many of my matches at ancestry were private trees, no tree, or a tree with less than 200 people. Going back 2 generations didn’t help me. If you aren’t paid up, you can’t look at the tree of your match and if they don’t reply to your email you’re SOL. The messages all go through ancestry. Great if you want to be anonymous but not so great if you are looking for living relatives. I had much better luck getting replies from GEDmatch and FamilyTreeDNA where you email directly to the person you match. Not to mention the tools to look at your DNA match so you know for sure you do match.
There certainly are drawbacks to the tie-everything-to-the-trees approach, Toni, but so many people have tested with Ancestry that it really makes sense to jump into the pool of that database. That being said, my own testing company of choice has always been Family Tree DNA and I would never test anybody at Ancestry without immediately transferring their data over to FTDNA.
I’m super excited, I had originally paid for the Y-37 ($69), then upgraded with the R1b SNP pack came out ($79) and then with the sale and my mystery coupon just got the next upgrade I plan to do – Y-67 ($69).
Not bad spread over 2 years! I’m still $10 less than the regular price of the Y-67 ($228), and I’ve got way more detail.
Last upgrade to that test I want to do is to get autosomnal – we’ll see if there’s any DNA left for that! 😀
FTDNA’s kits have been sold in Europe for years. I believe only recently have DNA kits by Ancestry dot com been sold outside of North America. I have Family Finder DNA matches at FTDNA from Ireland. This is unlikely to happen for Ancestry’s product for years after far more Europeans have tested. I’ve tested my autosomal DNA at both company’s and the match results are better at FTDNA. FTDNA’s matches respond to your e-mail more often. Ancestry dot com matches generally have poorer research which means it’s often not possible to figure how one is related. FTDNA’s tools are far superior to Ancestry’s. Ancestry’s product is designed and marketed to lure you into a monthly subscription which makes their product relatively (pun?) much more expensive in the long run. Ancestry used to offer the y-DNA test but abandoned it. This last week Ancestry announced they will no longer sell their flagship ancestry software and will drop support for it. Ancestry’s bean counters control their product offerings and services, which doesn’t provide much confidence to their long term commitment to their long term DNA offerings, the services they’ll provide or support. FTDNA’s product is genealogy DNA testing nothing else, they can’t abandon it and stay in business. FTDNA supports ‘surname projects’ customers can join. Some of the surname projects are quite extensive and supported by FTDNA at the WFN-World Family Network website. FTDNA’s customer support is very good. I’m not anti-Ancestry but it’s DNA testing is just a side product to them…and it shows.
There certainly are pros and cons, but the data pool at Ancestry is simply too big not to get into IF your ancestry is predominantly American. The tests have only just started to be sold by Ancestry outside of the US, and you’re right that it will take some time for the non-US database to grow.
I agree, too big to ignore. I like your suggestion for more people to export their AncestryDNA results to FTDNA. It would let me use the ‘compare’ tool against my AncestryDNA matches whose ancestral research is limited, as well as using the other powerful tools (chromosome browser)at FTDNA. AncestryDNA’s user interface is a simple design which I realize is intentional not wanting to intimidate the average researcher. Having tested at both it’s apparent to me that few AncestryDNA customers transfer their results to FTDNA which means they are missing out on another very large pool of DNA results for a relatively minimal extra cost.
And of course don’t forget Gedmatch, which allows us all to compare against others who’ve tested at other companies, too.
You didn’t mention the SNP packs or Big Y from FTDNA, which pretty much confuse me. Is there much genealogical use in getting them? I just upped to Y-111 to help solve an ancient NPE and wouldn’t object to doing more if I could understand their use.
To understand when and why to do Big Y testing, read Roberta Estes’ blog post “What About the Big Y?” in her blog, DNAeXplained. I’d read particularly the part subtitled “Who Needs This Test and Why?” As for the SNP packs, they have the same basic purpose and you can get personal advice about which SNP pack might be useful in your situation by contacting the project administrator of your YDNA surname project (or the appropriate haplogroup project).
You’ve really been busy replying to comments…. Just one more question.
I *truly* need to get a DNA test for a brother, and had no idea that DNA was retained by the company for potential further tests! I assumed that each new test-level required a new kit and a new test-procedure. Am I understanding this correctly, or did I misread?
If true, this makes my problem more solvable. I might be able to manage the 12-marker now, but a higher-marker test certainly will be needed. “Going to the well” two or three times is more problematic than talking him out of just one full bucket of water…. Perhaps this is a case where I should ask for extra swabs.
Thanks for the info on retained DNA. Hoping I was reading correctly.
Yes, if you test with Family Tree DNA, you can ask for extra swabs (be sure to check with the customer service folks and find out if there’s any extra cost) — and as long as there is still enough viable sample, other tests can be done down the road.
[Just a quiet little whispered ‘WAHOO’ here.]
Thanks….
🙂
(Approved for publication by The Legal Genealogist but with the specific caveat that the writer does not give a last name, an email address or other identifying information and so there is no way to know if any biases or commercial interests underlie the comment):
Pretty good review, thanks Judy. A couple of my own comments (maybe I should write my own post!):
— Your testing should be based on what information you want to find out, not budget. That is my biggest concern with the article directing people to tests based just on price.
If you don’t really know what you’re doing, but just think the DNA testing is cool – you probably want to do the autosomal test (not the Y-DNA or mtDNA). It will cover 100% of your ancestors, providing many cousin matches and connections. You will have different levels of matches with people, and many contacts to try to figure out some new relationships.
Y-DNA is only useful to compare a completely male lineage against someone else’s completely male lineage. Use only if you are trying to find out something on someone’s father’s father’s father…. You should have a specific reason why you are using this test, a specific theory you’re trying to test. This will only test 1 of your 8 ggparents, 1 of your 16 gggparents, etc – so you’re not covering much. It’s also like fishing in the ocean for a close match with new information – it’s going to be rare you will get a new relationship with a relatively recent common ancestor.
Same thing with the mtDNA tests, only mother line. Also, with the amount of female name changes, it is very hard to do any comparison on mtDNA matches. Again, it’s probably only useful if you are trying to show a recent common ancestor, or if you are trying to separate 2 specific female lines (and same comment as the Y-DNA, a non-match is interesting, but a match isn’t too interesting unless it is a HVR2 match). You should have a specific reason why you are using this test, a specific theory you’re trying to test.
— If you do the 12-marker test, then realize you are just getting some DNA in the system for possible future upgrades. Kind of like a down-payment for doing something serious in the future, just because you really can’t afford an extra few bucks. Do *not* expect the 12-marker test to be at all useful, and don’t even bother exploring your 12-marker matches – they are so far removed that it’s basically pointless. The only useful thing would be if you are testing 2 different male lines for potentially the same old ancestral line – if it’s not a match, then you know you are way off. However, even if it is a match at 12-markers, it could still be a *very* ancient ancestor and probably pre-records.
— you pointed out well the hidden cost of AncestryDNA, which is the $49/year membership. Without that information, the AncestryDNA test is not very useful because it doesn’t show you enough to do anything other than contact someone and try to figure it out – it doesn’t show you the matched relationship line, and it doesnt’ have any kind of chromosome-browser which is what you use to figure out your matching groups. You would need someone to contact you who has a full membership to get much use out of it.
The FTDNA site is much more professional and useful to someone researching their DNA genealogy. They provide many tools to do matches. They allow research, surname groups, and easier way to contact others.
— The AncestryDNA + FTDNA-transfer price is the best value approach to getting in both databases.
— Amazon Prime members get free shipping on the same price of AncestryDNA tests.
I am reluctantly approving the above comment, with my own caveat attached to it, because the writer does not identify himself except by first name. There is no email address associated with the comment and, so, no way to know what the biases of the writer are. Under these circumstances, I tend not to approve comments, but will here since there are some good points made.
I would add, however, that the comment “Amazon Prime members get free shipping on the same price of AncestryDNA tests” is not correct as of the time of this reply (the only advertised AncestryDNA offering on Amazon right now is priced at a whopping $149.99 — and you can get one whole lot of shipping for an extra fifty bucks!!!)
This was true during the Black Friday sales. I was about to order some DNA tests from Ancestry when I fortuitously noticed somebody mentioning this. So I got the same test via Amazon at the same price without the $10/$5/kit shipping charges that Ancestry charges. In other words, before buying from Ancestry, it’s a good idea to check prices at Amazon. As you noted though currently the price at Amazon is ridiculous.
I would like to know whether my grandfather’s grandmother was a native american. I have only a cousin who is descended from the same ggg-grandmother but from his mother. I don’t understand enough to know how to go or if it is possible to prove. Is there any way to make that connection?
You can test your cousin or yourself (or, better, both of you) for this, but the odds of detecting Native American ancestry depend on how far back the 100% Native American was. You received 50% of your autosomal DNA from your parent, 25% (on average) from your grandfather, 12.5% (on average) from your grandfather’s parent, and 6.25% (on average) from your grandfather’s grandmother. If she was 100% Native American, your autosomal DNA results should detect NA ancestry. But let’s say she was 50% NA: now it’s 3.125% (on average), still detectable but starting to get risky. If she was 25%, you’re down to about 1.5% — again still possibly detectable but no guarantees. The reason is that DNA gets randomly jumbled up in every generation and there’s always the chance that neither you nor your cousin happened to get enough NA genes in that random jumbling for it to show. What that means is that autosomal DNA can only be used to help prove; it can’t be used that far back to disprove (because you might just not have inherited that DNA by pure random chance, not because your ancestor wasn’t Native). So it’s sure worth a try, and testing yourself and your cousin could give you the evidence you want.
You said Choose the most critical female test candidate but if I want to learn about my own mother’s line, I can do the mtDNA test on myself, correct?
Yes, you can do the mtDNA test on yourself, since a mother passes her mtDNA to all of her children, male and female.