Taking Another Look At My DNA (Because I Can't Help Myself) --Part one

Image courtesy of  "dream designs" / Free Digital Photos.net


I have to share with you guys that this whole DNA thing has sparked some of my family members curiosity.  Back at the end of June, when I shared with my mom the results of my admixture test that I received through AncestryDNA she was quite intrigued to find out what my genetic breakdown was. I shared my findings in the following post: The Results: I'm What?!! As a recap, here's what I found out.

West African   70%
Finnish Volga-Ural   11%
British Isles   10%
Scandinavian   7%
Uncertain  2%

I could see it in my mother's eyes that she was thinking about taking a test herself. Then finally on July 1st, when my mom, brother, and I were hanging out around my dining room table and chatting about my results again, she finally said "Hey, I want to do that!" Within a few minutes, we were online ordering a Family Finder test kit from FamilyTreeDNA. Within a couple of days, the test kit arrived. She swabbed and mailed off her sample immediately. We received email confirmation that the test had arrived at the lab on July 10th and exactly one month later her results were in.

Here are her results:



31.23% Europe (French, Romanian)
68.77% Africa (Yoruba Mandenka)

Okay, West African roots no surprise here but hold on one gosh darn minute. What's this French and Romanian stuff all about? Again, another test and now more questions. With my mother showing 31.23% of her genetic make-up being French and Romanian, wouldn't some of this show up in my results? Could this simply be attributed to that I take more after my father genetically than my mother? 

Tune in tomorrow folks for the next episode of  "What on earth is going on with this DNA?"



Comments

  1. recombination can be a hassle!, I hope when I get around the kitchen table and start talking DNA, I get the "Same Results". I want to do that! Will be staying tuned.

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    Replies
    1. Recombination can be a hassle is right but I can't help but still think shouldn't something have showed up in me? Interesting though. Stay tuned. More coming in my next post. I hope to get it out later today.

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  2. I think you hit the nail on the head...genetically, girls are usually more like their father's side. At least that's what my former endocrinologist told me when I wondered why I was only 4ft 10 in tall. He asked me how tall my father's mother was...same height! And I have the coloring of the English (Dad's father & Mom's mother, but the build of the Welsh (my paternal grandmother). No traces of the Russian Jewish traits from my mother's father.

    The following is an interesting post about about the accuracy of admixture tests: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2006/03/how_african_are_you.html

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for tuning in. I have always thought I take a little more after my dad but still this result was bugging me. Stay tuned more coming soon. Hope to have a new post out later today, at the latest tomorrow. We'll see.

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  3. Although your looks may be the result of the dominant genes, you still have the genes that are not dominant. So two brown eyed individuals may have a blue eyed child if they both carry the recessive blue eyed gene. I think that we are a mix of both of our parents genes, in equal measure. Some may be dominant, some may combine to make something new but I don't see how you could have none of the French/Romanian genes from your mother's mix. I would wonder about reliability of the specific naming of the countries as opposed to thinking that you didn't get genes from your mother. I have read that sometimes attributing genes to a certain country may, in reality mean just a certain direction - East African may mean east of Nigeria, not Kenya, for example. That you have the genes from both sides sometimes means that our children can look like a grandparent on the side we don't look like. Hope this makes sense.

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    Replies
    1. Yes Kristin this does make sense to me. I had the same response regarding the French and Romanian. I thought how come nothing came up on the AncestryDNA test. More to come soon. :)

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  4. I guess you will have to test with a third company to see if anything matches up. I had a friend who had his father's DNA tested several times and it came up different each time.

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