- #My dna matches no family name in common how to#
- #My dna matches no family name in common professional#
We might, for instance, get 35% of DNA from our paternal grandfather, but just 15% of DNA from our paternal grandmother. In other words, we may get 50% from dad and 50% from mum, but that does not mean that we get 25% of DNA from each grandparent: in fact, as a rule, we don’t.
However, our more distant ancestors’ DNA, starting with our grandparents, is inherited randomly via our parents. As I’m sure you know, we inherit 50% of our DNA from our father, and the other 50% from our mother. Of course, the calculation is based solely on the amount of the DNA that we have in common, which necessarily begs the question “Why do we share this amount of DNA, and not more, or less?”. That means that Kathryn is, theoretically and at the very closest, a great-great-great-grandchild of my great-great-great-grandparents. Some months ago I was contacted by someone in America called Kathryn (not her real name), who appeared among my DNA matches as an (estimated) 4th-6th cousin.
#My dna matches no family name in common how to#
This said, genetic genealogy is not difficult to apply to your “traditional” genealogy research – if you know how to apply it.
#My dna matches no family name in common professional#
Now, I am not a genetic genealogy expert, and all I have learnt (and I am still learning) generally comes from experience and from reading articles & papers, online professional videos and specialised magazines.
answered by Stephen Haley G2G6 Mach 2 ( 24.If you have ever taken an autosomal DNA test with any company, be it Ancestry, 23andMe, FamilyTreeDNA, Living DNA, etc., you will have seen that your results will appear on the company’s database along with a (generally long) list of others users who match your own DNA. But if only some are, you might see less than you would expect in a DNA report on your heritage - especially if the DNA you received from them doesn't happen to be the special little chunks that the testing company has identified as "likely to be associated with Russian ancestry". So, if your mother's parents, and all 4 grandparents, and all 8 great greatparents are Russian and Polish Jews, then you would certainly have DNA that corresponded to those ancestors. Now, DNA has a lot more than 200 spots, but the diminishing values still apply. Eventually, you go back far enough that there's lots of ancestors you get 0 marbles from - it didn't get randomly picked for you. You have 40-60 in common with your grandmother you have 10-30 or so in common with your great-grandfather. Second, how much of your grandmother's side of the family are we talking about? Go back to the jar of 200 marbles - everyone has 200 marbles. That's about the best they can do, and it's pretty neat, but it's not bulletproof. Then once they have enough of these small sections, they can say "If you have sections A,B,C,D, and E, you probably got it from ancestors in that part of the world". Do you have Russian, Polish, or Jewish DNA? First you have to think about, what does "Russian" DNA or "Polish" DNA actually mean? What the DNA testing companies do is, they find small sections of DNA that mostly only occur in people who are descended from certain regions of the world at certain times in history. So yes, you have DNA from your dad's mother.īut now you want to get back into "side of the family" and look at historical groups of DNA. It would be nearly impossible for him to randomly pull out 100 red marbles, but it wouldn't be strange at all if he pulled out 60 red marbles and 40 blue ones, rather than 50 of each. He then picks out 100 marbles to give to you. Imagine it as your father having 200 marbles in a jar - half are red, from his father, and half are blue, from his mother. You don't automatically get 25% from your grandfather and 25% from your grandmother, it's more random. Your father then passed half his DNA to you - but it's a mixed half. So your father has 50% of his DNA from his mother. The current DNA test for what you're talking about is autosomal DNA testing, or auDNA for short.ĭo you get some of your DNA from your father's mother? Almost certainly yes! Each person gets 50% of their DNA from their father, and 50% from their mother. So we don't need to worry about the Y-DNA - which only exists in men, and is passed from father to son - or mitochondrial DNA - which isn't actually in *your* DNA, and everyone has it, and is passed from mother to child. In this case, you're really talking about the whole DNA package across all 23 chromosomes. Hopefully I can help explain how DNA inheritance works. It's not obvious, but this is actually more than one question.