Mitochondrial and Y DNA research - New Resource!

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The three kinds of DNA of use for family history research*


Autosomal DNA

For autosomal DNA (AtDNA), to make best use of your results for research, you will "fish in all the ponds" by testing with Ancestry and 23andme since neither accept uploads, and then upload your raw data to Gedmatch, MyHeritage and FamilyTreeDNA, which do accept uploads - for free! 

The value of autosomal DNA testing is that it covers all of your ancestry back four generations or so, and up to six or seven generations, which is quite long ago. However, as your matches are ever smaller as you go further back in time, your AtDNA will not take you back to your deep ancestry before surnames and record keeping.

Y and Mt DNA

Both Y and Mt DNA will take you back very far, but it may or may not help you find living cousins. So if you can afford only a few tests -- do autosomal for yourself and your oldest relatives. If you can spend a bit more, do a Y test on your father, brother or paternal uncle if possible, because that test will follow your paternal line (your father's father's father, etc.) back thousands of years. And if you can do "Big Y" you can get back to the dawn of humanity. Only men have Y DNA, so women need to test male relatives in the paternal lines. Legacy Family Tree blog explains more: https://www.legacytree.com/blog/dna-testing-for-genealogical-research

Mitochondrial DNA

Mitochondrial DNA is the slowest changing and smallest bundle of DNA we have, and we get it from our mothers. Each human gets Mt DNA, but only women pass it along to their children. Since it changes so slowly, test results will rarely find living cousins. However, if you have a mystery line in the past, Mt DNA can confirm or rule out possibilities in that line. Lisa Louise Cooke discusses this in her blog post: https://lisalouisecooke.com/2016/03/21/mtdna-test-dna-for-genealogy/

New Option for Y and Mt DNA

Last year we mourned the disappearance of the FamilyTreeDNA-supported databases for Y and Mt DNA. Truth be told, they were not very useful. Now, we have a new option: 


The group of people who have put this new resource together seem to know what they are doing. If you are interested, please join their Facebook group and chat with other users and the team. 

MitoYDNA logo: https://mitoydna.org

Have you tried mitoYDNA? If so, please comment below. Thanks!

* Interested in using DNA for family history and genealogy research? Check out our Genetic Genealogy/DNA Interest Group: http://skcgs.org/genetic-genealogy-group.html

Valorie Cowan Zimmerman

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