April 25 is International DNA Day. It began as an American national holiday which has since been celebrated internationally. World DNA Day commemorates the day in 1953 when scientists James Watson (USA), Francis Crick (UK), Maurice Wilkins (NZ) and Rosalind Franklin (UK) published a paper revealing the discovery of DNA's double helix structure.
DNA testing has become increasingly popular in recent years. People take the test for a number of reasons. They might be searching for a relative due to adoption or a parent being absent from their lives or they might be curious about their background or genetic make-up. I had my DNA tested in 2016 and then my father's in 2018 and the results were fascinating. I discovered I have so many relatives I never knew existed and the fun part (also frustrating) is trying to work out how we are all related.
My ethnic origins.
My father's ethnic origins.
Two of the most popular DNA testing companies are
FamilyTreeDNA and
Ancestry.com. There are three main tests you can take - a family finder test that finds anyone related to you within the last six generations, Y-DNA (paternal line) and MTDNA (maternal line). Once you have the results you will see all your matches and the possible relationship they are to you, e.g. 1st cousin, 2nd-4th cousin, 3rd-5th cousin etc. Each DNA match comes with information about which chromosomes you have in common and the length of the centimorgans (cM), the higher the centimorgan value, the closer the relationship.
When I had my DNA tested it was done in hope of finding information about my father's mother. I know very little about her background apart from her parents' first names and countries of origin. DNA has revealed that my grandmother's father was Finnish and her mother was a mix of Swedish and Russian. My father's MTDNA results confirmed his maternal line is Swedish and we have many Swedish DNA matches in the 3rd-5th cousin range. It has been time consuming putting the family tree together but I am beginning to find clarity. If you don't know how you are related to a particular DNA match, try to determine how other matches are related to each other, this helps enormously.
DNA research can be very rewarding and I thoroughly recommend it. Happy DNA Day!
