As commercial DNA testing has gone mainstream, more and more people are taking advantage of it for a variety of reasons, most clustering around ancestry and family tree building, and health related concerns.
Right off the bat, I want to address the elephant in the room. This being a conspiracy site in the main, a large number of readers will likely have healthy concerns relating to privacy issues with just handing their DNA over to unknowns. I understand that, I really do, but I personally do not partake in that particular fear. It is pretty well known that currently everyone hands out large gobs of DNA in their trash. Anyone with nefarious designs can already get it from a dumpster if they really, REALLY want your DNA, and if they don't, they're not going to sift through millions of tests at a DNA company. So, to me, that point is moot. Your mileage may, and probably does, vary.
Here is an overview of the 5 top testing companies, comparing them against one another:
I've had my own DNA tested at two of those companies, and compared the results. The video does a good job of sifting them out and delivering recommendations for what you may be looking for, but it neglects to mention a few things.
Your results WILL vary between the various companies. This is because they each test for different SNPs (which i think of as the base pairs), as well as using different, proprietary algorithms to analyse your DNA against their database. To make matters more complicated, each company has it's own database to compare your results against. Taken all together, those factors produce differing end results, and it's my belief that the different comparison databases they use are probably the major factor in the analysis results being different. No company can find what they have no basis to look for in their database, and some times they will find things that are not really there, because what they have to compare against is what they will find - and that does not always line up with objective reality. The results can be skewed because the effort to find matches is hampered by the limitations of the database, so they will occasionally find "matches" that are only matches because it is closest to a particular dataset, not because it is close enough to actually BE a match. it's a case of "close, but no cigar" being reported as "close enough for gummint work".
Taking multiple tests can give you a finer-grained DNA file. This is because, as previously mentioned, each company tests for different SNPs, the ones most important to that company. Because they each test different SNPs, two or more files can be combined to create a new file, one that contains ALL of the SNPs tested, while rejecting duplicate SNPs. The two companies I teste with test for about 750,000 SNPs each, but when I combined the files, it resulted in a file with about 1.2 million unique SNPs, and the file size increased from about 17 megabytes to around 32 megabytes. This gave me a much larger and much finer-grained file to use in comparison testing, which is nearly twice as likely to find valid matches.
That brings me to another important consideration in selecting a DNA testing service. Some will allow you to download the "raw" file, and others will not. I won't deal with companies that will not allow me to download my own raw data. That's MY data, so by rights I should have access to it. If they can't give me that, they don't need my money.
Other uses for the raw DNA files include reconstructing DNA from deceased folks who never got tested. I started reconstructing my dad's DNA, who died in 1998 before testing was widespread. To do that, you "phase" DNA from multiple files to separate out the maternal from the paternal DNA, and then start combining just the paternal (or maternal) DNA from them into a file of it's own. My efforts got stopped cold at around a 75% reconstruction. I Have 3 sisters and a (paternal) half brother, so theoretically I should be able to get near 97% complete, but I could only get one of my sisters to be tested. the other two are, like most folks here, leery of getting their DNA tested. I could not "phase" my half-brother's DNA properly, because I do not have his mom's DNA to sift the paternal DNA out with.
The way it works is that every new batch of DNA you add to the file gives you half of the outstanding DNA. You start with your own, which gives you half of the parent's DnA, then each one you add increases that amount by half of the outstanding DNA, because each child gets a different half of the parental DNA. So I started with my own DNA (50% of dad's genome), and then factored in my sisters DNA whcih gave me half of the outstanding 50%, or 25% of the total. Adding in a second sister would give me an additional 12.5% (half of the missing 25%), and adding a third would give me a further 6.25% (half of the missing 12.5%), and the brother would only add 3.125 % (half of the missing 5,25%) to that. So theoretically I should be able to recover 50%+25%+12.5%+6.25%+3.125% = 96.875% of dad's genome, but that will never be unless I can convince some of my other siblings that no one in the government (US or Chinese) is actively hunting them.
Once you have your own raw file(s), there are programs you can use to analyze or combine them at home, on your own computer. Alternatively, there are sites you can upload the file, or a combined file, to that will do analysis for you. If, however, your Uncle Alfred committed a series of serial murders back in the 80's, and if you would prefer Uncle Alfred not get caught and brought to justice over those murders, then you would want to be selective of which sites you upload your data to - some of them are used by law enforcement to solve cold cases or to identify previously unidentified human remains, Jane and John Doe" bodies. Your DNA on those sites could potentially give law enforcement leads to look into for your relatives that may have been killers or killees.
One of my favorites among those third-party sites is " My True Ancestry". I've uploaded my combined raw files to it, and found some astonishing connections - which may, or may not, be factual - among the detritus of that site. I'm an apparent match to "Cheddar man", which a British Museum docent assured me was vanishingly unlikely on YouTube. Her stance was that the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers of Britain were entirely wiped out, so of course if they didn't leave an DNA in their progeny, then there was no way I could have inherited it. I personally think that's bunk, and that around 10% of the British genome comes from Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, but what do I know? I'm not British!
It has also linked me to Merovingian burials (which supports a deep family tree making the same claim that I ran across), 10 or so of the 50 Vikings executed at Dorset. 7 or so of the vikings massacred at Cambridge on St. Brice's Day, 1002, about 3 of the vikings buried at Brattahlid in Greenland around 1000 AD from whence sprang Leif Erikson and others of the intrepid viking discoverers of North America, and several of the Vikings/Britons mixes who first settled Iceland.
And that's not even getting into Bronze Age and Iron Age pre-Roman Briton burials - Amesbury, Dibble's farm, ancient Orcadians and Bronze Age dwellers in Scotland,.. Bronze Age dwellers on Rathlin Island off the northern Irish coast, etc.
Of Iron Age British results, I find a connection with 6 of the 7 presumed "gladiators" unearthed at York from around 250 AD when York was still Roman Eboricum. Another interesting reult was a connection to two Iron Age Britons from Kent, of the Cantii tribe. One of those was from 300 BC, but the more interesting - to me - one was from 50 BC, just a scant 5 or 6 years after Caesar's attempted landing and aborted invasion at Pegwell Bay on the Kentish coast, just a scant 10 miles or so from the burial site. I'll always wonder if one of my relatives was among those that faced down the mighty Caesar after his conquest of Gaul, when he tried to take another bite that was more than he could chew.
I don't know if any of those results are "real" or not - although some of them are supported by paperwork, while others are not - but it's fun to me to have a basis for speculations.
.
Right off the bat, I want to address the elephant in the room. This being a conspiracy site in the main, a large number of readers will likely have healthy concerns relating to privacy issues with just handing their DNA over to unknowns. I understand that, I really do, but I personally do not partake in that particular fear. It is pretty well known that currently everyone hands out large gobs of DNA in their trash. Anyone with nefarious designs can already get it from a dumpster if they really, REALLY want your DNA, and if they don't, they're not going to sift through millions of tests at a DNA company. So, to me, that point is moot. Your mileage may, and probably does, vary.
Here is an overview of the 5 top testing companies, comparing them against one another:
I've had my own DNA tested at two of those companies, and compared the results. The video does a good job of sifting them out and delivering recommendations for what you may be looking for, but it neglects to mention a few things.
Your results WILL vary between the various companies. This is because they each test for different SNPs (which i think of as the base pairs), as well as using different, proprietary algorithms to analyse your DNA against their database. To make matters more complicated, each company has it's own database to compare your results against. Taken all together, those factors produce differing end results, and it's my belief that the different comparison databases they use are probably the major factor in the analysis results being different. No company can find what they have no basis to look for in their database, and some times they will find things that are not really there, because what they have to compare against is what they will find - and that does not always line up with objective reality. The results can be skewed because the effort to find matches is hampered by the limitations of the database, so they will occasionally find "matches" that are only matches because it is closest to a particular dataset, not because it is close enough to actually BE a match. it's a case of "close, but no cigar" being reported as "close enough for gummint work".
Taking multiple tests can give you a finer-grained DNA file. This is because, as previously mentioned, each company tests for different SNPs, the ones most important to that company. Because they each test different SNPs, two or more files can be combined to create a new file, one that contains ALL of the SNPs tested, while rejecting duplicate SNPs. The two companies I teste with test for about 750,000 SNPs each, but when I combined the files, it resulted in a file with about 1.2 million unique SNPs, and the file size increased from about 17 megabytes to around 32 megabytes. This gave me a much larger and much finer-grained file to use in comparison testing, which is nearly twice as likely to find valid matches.
That brings me to another important consideration in selecting a DNA testing service. Some will allow you to download the "raw" file, and others will not. I won't deal with companies that will not allow me to download my own raw data. That's MY data, so by rights I should have access to it. If they can't give me that, they don't need my money.
Other uses for the raw DNA files include reconstructing DNA from deceased folks who never got tested. I started reconstructing my dad's DNA, who died in 1998 before testing was widespread. To do that, you "phase" DNA from multiple files to separate out the maternal from the paternal DNA, and then start combining just the paternal (or maternal) DNA from them into a file of it's own. My efforts got stopped cold at around a 75% reconstruction. I Have 3 sisters and a (paternal) half brother, so theoretically I should be able to get near 97% complete, but I could only get one of my sisters to be tested. the other two are, like most folks here, leery of getting their DNA tested. I could not "phase" my half-brother's DNA properly, because I do not have his mom's DNA to sift the paternal DNA out with.
The way it works is that every new batch of DNA you add to the file gives you half of the outstanding DNA. You start with your own, which gives you half of the parent's DnA, then each one you add increases that amount by half of the outstanding DNA, because each child gets a different half of the parental DNA. So I started with my own DNA (50% of dad's genome), and then factored in my sisters DNA whcih gave me half of the outstanding 50%, or 25% of the total. Adding in a second sister would give me an additional 12.5% (half of the missing 25%), and adding a third would give me a further 6.25% (half of the missing 12.5%), and the brother would only add 3.125 % (half of the missing 5,25%) to that. So theoretically I should be able to recover 50%+25%+12.5%+6.25%+3.125% = 96.875% of dad's genome, but that will never be unless I can convince some of my other siblings that no one in the government (US or Chinese) is actively hunting them.
Once you have your own raw file(s), there are programs you can use to analyze or combine them at home, on your own computer. Alternatively, there are sites you can upload the file, or a combined file, to that will do analysis for you. If, however, your Uncle Alfred committed a series of serial murders back in the 80's, and if you would prefer Uncle Alfred not get caught and brought to justice over those murders, then you would want to be selective of which sites you upload your data to - some of them are used by law enforcement to solve cold cases or to identify previously unidentified human remains, Jane and John Doe" bodies. Your DNA on those sites could potentially give law enforcement leads to look into for your relatives that may have been killers or killees.
One of my favorites among those third-party sites is " My True Ancestry". I've uploaded my combined raw files to it, and found some astonishing connections - which may, or may not, be factual - among the detritus of that site. I'm an apparent match to "Cheddar man", which a British Museum docent assured me was vanishingly unlikely on YouTube. Her stance was that the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers of Britain were entirely wiped out, so of course if they didn't leave an DNA in their progeny, then there was no way I could have inherited it. I personally think that's bunk, and that around 10% of the British genome comes from Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, but what do I know? I'm not British!
It has also linked me to Merovingian burials (which supports a deep family tree making the same claim that I ran across), 10 or so of the 50 Vikings executed at Dorset. 7 or so of the vikings massacred at Cambridge on St. Brice's Day, 1002, about 3 of the vikings buried at Brattahlid in Greenland around 1000 AD from whence sprang Leif Erikson and others of the intrepid viking discoverers of North America, and several of the Vikings/Britons mixes who first settled Iceland.
And that's not even getting into Bronze Age and Iron Age pre-Roman Briton burials - Amesbury, Dibble's farm, ancient Orcadians and Bronze Age dwellers in Scotland,.. Bronze Age dwellers on Rathlin Island off the northern Irish coast, etc.
Of Iron Age British results, I find a connection with 6 of the 7 presumed "gladiators" unearthed at York from around 250 AD when York was still Roman Eboricum. Another interesting reult was a connection to two Iron Age Britons from Kent, of the Cantii tribe. One of those was from 300 BC, but the more interesting - to me - one was from 50 BC, just a scant 5 or 6 years after Caesar's attempted landing and aborted invasion at Pegwell Bay on the Kentish coast, just a scant 10 miles or so from the burial site. I'll always wonder if one of my relatives was among those that faced down the mighty Caesar after his conquest of Gaul, when he tried to take another bite that was more than he could chew.
I don't know if any of those results are "real" or not - although some of them are supported by paperwork, while others are not - but it's fun to me to have a basis for speculations.
.
![[Image: eves-xfiles2.gif]](https://i.ibb.co/D7HYHrK/eves-xfiles2.gif)
![[Image: Green_Grass_PNG_Clip_Art-2066.png]](https://pics.clipartpng.com/midle/Green_Grass_PNG_Clip_Art-2066.png)
