Re: Tired of Paying for DNA Testing?
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In reply to:
Re: Tired of Paying for DNA Testing?
Robert McClure 12/28/05
It is a good question. MtDNA is one of the hardest ones to figure out.
Males inherit their mother's mtDNA and can be tested for it. They do not pass it on to any of their children. It resides outside the nucleus, while the X, Y, and autosomal (non-sex) chromosomes are all inside the nucleus. The DNAHeritage site contains an illustration that is helpful:
http://www.dnaheritage.com/tutorial1.asphttp://www.dnaheritage.com/tutorial1.asp
There is a lot more mtDNA, so it is often possible to extract it when all the nuclear DNA has deteriorated. Thus, you will often see it used for forensic identification and the analysis of ancient remains.
It is not often used for genealogical purposes, since there are few situations to which it applies. The fact that most Western names follow the male line gives Y-DNA a big advantage. This post for an example of a successful genealogical use, but I haven't found many others:
http://genforum.genealogy.com/dna/messages/40.htmlhttp://genforum.genealogy.com/dna/messages/40.html
MtDNA, at least with the usual tests, does not have as much discriminating power as Y-STR information. Thus, people will often uncover matches with people with whom they could only have a common ancestor thousands of years ago.
It is mainly of use to follow ancient migrations. It should be noted that, even though Y- and mt-haplogroups use letters as names, there is no connection between them.
There may be some genealogical information to be gleaned from X-chromosomes. DNA-Fingerprint (www.dna-fingerprint.com) offers X-tests, but I haven't really looked into how the results are applied.
I suspect that SMGF is also researching its potential. However, their focus now seems to be on using autosomal DNA.