Has anybody here had a DNA test done?

Infidelity is very possible. I'm sure the last estimate I saw was something like 2 to 20% of kids (depends on the country) are raised by someone that they think is their father but isn't.
 
Hades said:
Or you dad or grandad isn't who you thought he was.
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That would mean both my parents and all 4 grandparents aren't who I thought they were.
My surname used to be McGuinness for starters but it was changed to Poole by my Grandad back in the 40s.
My Mum's side are a big Irish family called Allen.
I could be adopted.

The only problem there is I was identical to my Mum growing up and now at 65 I'm identical to my Dad.
 
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Do you know the reason for the name change? Perhaps he was adopted and changed it to his real family name. That may explain some of it (assuming the test is accurate).
 
Mr Jack said:
Ah, okay, so he's talking about mitochondrial DNA there, and specifically mitochondrial haplogroups.

To quickly explain for others who might not know: mitochondria are vital parts of every cell in your body, with major responsibility for energy generation. They have their own (but tiny) genome and are passed exclusively along the female line. Unlike the rest of your DNA which is a mixture of the genes from parents, the DNA in your mitochondria comes only from your mother and thus passes mostly unchanged along from grandmother to mother to child. Also, because you have around one hundred mitochondria in every cell of your body and each mitochondrium contains multiple copies of this DNA it is particularly easy to reconstruct from ancient DNA (i.e. from skeletons recovered from the past) and particularly cheap and easy to sequence from living people. All this means that we have particularly good data on how mitochondrial DNA has changed, diverged and been passed down through time. Because it is passed only down the female line it also forms nicely branching trees and the different mitochondrial sequences can be grouped into "haplotypes" defined by the mutations present, people with the same haplotype are referred to as having the same "haplogroup".

What the guy in the clip is talking about here is that the two women share a particular haplogroup (I couldn't read the text on the screen in that clip, but I think he's talking about L0?), that haplogroup branched off from the other haplogroups still found in the human population particularly early - some 200,000 years ago. But, of course, that's only referring to a number of mutations accumulated in that haplogroup; most of the DNA present in the mitochondrial DNA is the same between everyone and goes back much, much further than 200,000 years.

Incidentally, he also slightly misspeaks (or oversimplifies) when he's talking about Mitochondrial Eve. Mitochondrial Eve is not the most recent common ancestor of all humanity; she is the most recent common ancestor traced exclusively by the female line. The most recent common ancestor is far more recent, probably in the last ten thousand years or sooner.
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Jack speak for they're all our brothers and sisters from another mother, embrace multiculturalism :) I think Mr. Jack should investigate any at least moralistic relationship with one Angela Merkel :)
 
SexyGreyFox said:
That would mean both my parents and all 4 grandparents aren't who I thought they were.
My surname used to be McGuinness for starters but it was changed to Poole by my Grandad back in the 40s.
My Mum's side are a big Irish family called Allen.
I could be adopted.

The only problem there is I was identical to my Mum growing up and now at 65 I'm identical to my Dad.
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Do you find yourself looking wistfully at big caravans perchance?
 
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Hades said:
Do you know the reason for the name change? Perhaps he was adopted and changed it to his real family name. That may explain some of it (assuming the test is accurate).
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My Uncle who has done our family history says it was PROBABLY because he was a criminal.
He had been to prison twice and we were connected to a local well known family with the same name who may have wanted him to change his name.
All our holidays were paid for by this family and we never went short.
As a young boy I always thought he was a war hero/pilot but it turns out part of his sentence was working as a Gofor on an RAF base in Wales.
 
Well either the test isn't accurate or someone close to you in the family line isn't who you think they are. That's the only two explanations really. So I would be inclined to get a second test from another company and see if they tally with the first. Then you'll be closer to the answer.
 
SexyGreyFox said:
Funnily enough where the first 3 OCUK shops were (IMEX), that's where the Gypsy/Traveler site was in the 60s/early 70s.
Loads of my Mum's family lived in Mason Street that led to that ground.
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Life was so hard back then, I have spent quite a bit of time tracing my family history on FindMyPast and Ancestry, its amazing the stuff you find out. Its also very sad at times when you read that someone had lived in the workhouse and had children there, bloody awful.
 
neocon said:
How about the health analysis of your DNA? That's normally extra and might be interesting.
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Might be interesting but part of me would rather not know. Probably something heart related, with a Dad who died before 60, his dad who died before 50 and my mums mum who died before 60. Hopefully ill have the health of my mum who is nearly 80 and her dad who lived into his late 80s.
 
Family history related question.

I've been using Ancestry to build out our family tree, I was wondering how or even if one should approach possible sensitive topics with other people?


Context - I'm pretty sure that someone's great-grandmother was already married to a great-granduncle of mine when they got married. Pretty confident as they are in the 1939 register as living with both people. :D
 
Azza said:
Family history related question.

I've been using Ancestry to build out our family tree, I was wondering how or even if one should approach possible sensitive topics with other people?


Context - I'm pretty sure that someone's great-grandmother was already married to a great-granduncle of mine when they got married. Pretty confident as they are in the 1939 register as living with both people. :D
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Just don’t? Why bring up old **** when the only thing to come out of it is people getting hurt?
 
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