RLP 238: RLP with DNA 1 – Take a DNA Test

Nicole (0s):
Episode 238 RLP with DNA one Take a DNA Test. Today’s episode is sponsored by newspapers.com. Break down Genealogy brick walls with a subscription to the largest online newspaper archive Welcome to Research Like a Pro a Genealogy podcast about taking your research to the next level. Hosted by Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder accredited Genealogist professional Diana and Nicole are the mother daughter team at FamilyLocket dot com and the authors of Research Like, a Pro, a Genealogist guide with Robin Wirthlin. They also co-authored the Companion Volume Research Like a Pro with DNA.

Nicole (40s):
Join Diana and Nicole as they discuss how to stay organized, make progress in their research, and solve difficult cases. Let’s go. Hello and good morning and Welcome to Research. Like a Pro

Diana (53s):
Hi Nicole. How, are you today?

Nicole (54s):
I’m doing great. What. have you been working on or Doing

Diana (57s):
Well, I discovered on my shelf doing some cleaning, the second book of Brooks Blevins series of the history of the Ozarks. Do you remember all last year? I was reading Volume one and we talked about several things on the podcast about that and I had ordered Volume two, but I kind of forgot about it. So I found it and just started reading that this week and I’m already loving it. It’s titled A History of the Ozarks, the Conflicted Ozarks, and the Last Volume left off kind of mid 1850s. So this is going to cover the Civil War era and the very, very first chapter starts talking about the attitudes of the people towards slavery.

Diana (1m 40s):
and I am so interested in this because as I looked at the map of what’s considered the Ozarks kind of the southern part of Missouri Northern part of Arkansas, I realized that so many of our families came from that exact area. And so I, I am always interested in learning more about the history of where our people lived. Let me just read a little bit of the Amazon description. The Ozarks of the mid 18 hundreds was the land of divisions, the uplands and its people inhabited a geographic and cultural borderland straddling Midwest and west, north and south frontier and civilization and secessionist and unionist. As civil war raised across the region, neighbor turned against neighbor unleashing a generation of animus and violence that lasted long after 1865.

Diana (2m 27s):
The second Volume of Brooks Beloved’s history begins with the region’s distinctive relationship to slavery, largely unsuitable for plantation farming. The Ozarks used enslaved persons on a smaller scale or in some places not at all. So that just gives a little bite of what’s going to be talked about in this book.

Nicole (2m 46s):
Well that’s neat that it calls out the fact that it was unsuitable for plantation farming and I hadn’t really thought too much about the different geographic features causing plantations to be unsuitable, but that makes sense that in the Ozarks it wasn’t a norm.

Diana (2m 60s):
Exactly. Rocky, very forested and I. Remember when we had our class on Missouri, we talked all about the regions, the geographic regions in Missouri and along the rivers, the Missouri and the Mississippi, you know where you had the floodplains and it was typically more agricultural. That is where the plantation farmers from the south would come and claim all that land. So I just read this morning that by the 1850s all of that, that good plantation land was taken. And so what was left was more of this land that was just difficult to actually farm, which makes me wonder if that’s why our Ancestors did not stay because they all eventually migrated to Texas, right?

Diana (3m 44s):
So maybe they thought, you know, okay, this is great, I’m getting this land patent of you know, so many acres. But then when they actually try to make a living on it, they realized, eh, this isn’t what I where I wanna be. You know, try somewhere else. Just the thought.

Nicole (3m 56s):
Well, greed, I’m glad you’re gonna be reading that. Are you just gonna read a little bit every week?

Diana (4m 1s):
Yeah, I just, it’s pretty in depth and so I just read a couple pages and you know, it’s a beautiful hardbound book, but I have my red pencil out and I am highlighting the important concepts because I go back through these books and when I’m writing reports or writing about the Ancestors, I wanna find those little tidbits that I can use that talk about some of the attitudes. and I love that he includes journals and histories. He’s really made a really nice compendium of a lot of written work that’s out there, including primary sources, you know, people’s stories about it.

Nicole (4m 37s):
Great. Well for announcements, our Research Like, a Pro Webinar series for 2023 is still accepting registrants and will all year if you register, you have access to all 12 of the webinars for the year. They are going to be monthly case studies featuring the Research Like a Pro and Research Like a Pro with d n a process. We already had January’s Webinar where Diana talked about her Benjamin Cox case. And the handout for each of these webinars is a research report that the presenter wrote when they were working on their project. Next month I’ll be talking about my Daniel Arnold report, which utilizes autosomal d n A and Y D N A. Then that will be followed by Alice Childs in March, who’s an accredited Genealogist, who I worked with on the second phase of the Daniel Arnold project.

Nicole (5m 23s):
So she’ll be sharing how she continued the research on that case and conclusions that were made. So that’ll be fun. And we have several other people lined up for 2023. And if you would like to present one of your research projects, we invite you to submit your application on our website. Also, we’ve been looking at the dates for this fall for the next Research Like, a Pro study group. And that will begin in August and end in November. So we’ll be looking for peer group leaders as usual, who would like to be part of the study group and would receive complimentary registration. So apply on our, our website and if you’re not a member of our newsletter yet, you should definitely become one so that you can hear all of our news, see new blog posts and podcast episodes and any coupons that we have,

Diana (6m 7s):
Right? So we have all sorts of exciting things going on and Roots Tech is just right around the corner. So we encourage you to register for Roots Tech and if you can’t come in person, be sure to take advantage of the free online version and ngs, the National Genealogy Society Conference in Richmond. Virginia is open for registration as well, and that will be in person. And then they also have an online version. So I think that’s one of the great things that has come out of Covid is having so many online options to do institutes and conferences and I not seeing that go away. Everybody really loves that version, but I, for one, I’m excited to be in person again.

Diana (6m 49s):
It’s always fun. Yeah. All right, well we are starting a fun podcast series where we’re going to be talking about the Research Like, a Pro DNA process. And so we’re going to go through each chapter and record one episode per chapter. So we’ll have 12 episodes and you know, I’ll just give you a little preview of those straight from the table of content. So we will have Take a DNA Test as chapter one. Chapter two, assess your DNA matches and analyze your pedigree. Chapter three, organize your DNA matches visually with diagrams in family trees. Chapter four, create a research objective.

Diana (7m 29s):
Chapter five, write source citations for DNA and documentary sources. Chapter six, analyze your sources and evaluate your DNA matches. Chapter seven, locality research and Ethnicity, chapter eight, DNA Tools and Methodology. Chapter nine, research planning with DNA Chapter 10, research Logs and Writing as you go. Chapter 11, correlating findings and finishing the research report. And finally, chapter 12, what’s next? Publishing, productivity and further education. So as you see, we take you through an entire DNA project, the beginning. We help you learn what to do with your DNA and get organized with your matches, and then how to choose a project and go all the way through doing something.

Diana (8m 14s):
So we invite you to follow along with us, try a project on your own and see what you can Discover in your DNA N

Nicole (8m 22s):
All right, well let’s get started with chapter one, Take a DNA Test. And this chapter was written by Robin Wirthlin, our colleague. And we start off talking about how d n was one of the great discoveries of the 19th and 20th centuries. And d n includes four bases called aine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine. And these are usually abbreviated with the letters A, T, G, and C. And it’s been amazing that in the last 150 years, human d n a has been described, isolated and studied, and a lot of advances in technology and scientific breakthroughs now enable us to use DNA as a Genealogical research and discovery tool, which is just so exciting.

Nicole (9m 5s):
So DNA is a biological connection to our Ancestors. We inherited it from them. So using DNA N can help us extend our family lines and learn more about our Ancestors weak glimpse into the past as we examine our DNA results compared to the DNA N results of others who have been tested. Human d n comes in two times, Nu nuclear and Mitochondrial nu nuclear d n is inside the nucleus of the cell. And within the nucleus you’ll find 23 chromosome pairs. The first 22 are autosomes and then chromosomes 23 are the sex chromosomes, the X and the Y for males, and two Xes for females.

Nicole (9m 49s):
So that is all the nuclear dna. And then the other type of DNA N is Mitochondrial and all people have Mitochondrial DNA and it’s found within the mitochondria in each human cell.

Diana (10m 1s):
Great, thanks for that review of exactly where our DNA comes from. You know, we probably all studied this in our high school biology or college biology, and isn’t it funny that now we’re doing family history and we’re returning to that? So let’s talk a little bit about DNA tests. And as you said, Nicole, there are the 22 autosomes, and so that’s where we get the term autosomal dna. And we often abbreviate that as the lowercase at and then uppercase dna. So when you see that in people’s writing or discussing things just now, that’s autosomal dna.

Diana (10m 41s):
And that looks at the chromosome pairs one through 22, the AutoZones and some testing companies also look at the X chromosome for their autosomal tests. So not all companies report that, but some do. Now most human DNA is the same and tests look at 700,000 locations in the autosomal DNA and the SNPs, we call them SNPs, but that stands for single nucleotide polymorphisms. So you can see why we just call it SNPs and you’ll see that written as capital s n P. And this is where the DNA coat is more likely to vary. So where yours is going to be different from your neighbors.

Diana (11m 25s):
And so the results when they come in after you take your DNA test, compares your DNA with the results of others in the database. And so your raw dna, if you were to look at it, it’s just a list of nucleotides, those AGC and Ts in all different forms. So those can be mixed up and that’s what our DNA looks like when it’s raw. But we wouldn’t know what to do do with that. So the companies do their magic and they produce a match list of people who show the amount of DNA shared in Cent Morgans. So let’s talk about what a centor is. Centor is a unit of measurement of the likelihood that DNA will recombined.

Diana (12m 11s):
So it’s random recombination. And we have to know this, that even though we will inherit autosomal DNA from all of our Ancestors on all of our lines at the earliest levels such as parent grandparent, great-grandparent, as we’ve moved further back on the tree, we are not going to get DNA from all of our further back generations. That doesn’t mean they’re not your Ancestors, it just means that you may not have gotten a little piece of DNA from them. So there is a limit of how far back we can go with autosomal dna and with today’s technology that’s about six to eight generations.

Diana (12m 52s):
So if you’re interested in learning more about family members, take your autosomal DNA test and then consider having other people. And we talk a lot about having the further generation up the tree take a test. So if you’ve got a grandparent or great aunt, you know their DNA will be better than yours because they are closer generationally to those people further on your tree. So the amounts of shared Santa Morgan can be compared with expected amounts of shared DNA for relationships. If you share a lot more DNA with someone, that usually means a closer relationship.

Diana (13m 32s):
And so if you see your sister, your brother, your children, your parent, your first cousin, you’re going to have significant numbers of dna. Whereas a third, fourth cousin is going to be much smaller. And we use that to help us figure out who these DNA matches are. So DNA information is meaningful in family history research only when compared with other DNA test takers. And we have to compare family relationships and we have to do Genealogy use our documentary research to put all of this together.

Nicole (14m 7s):
Absolutely. You know, people who are unfamiliar with DNA testing for Genealogy sometimes wonder like, how do you figure out anything about your Ancestors if you’re not testing the DNA of your Ancestors? And the key thing to understand there is that your shared DNA n with another person traces back to a connection to a common ancestor. And so comparing the tree of yourself with that match can help you see which ancestor you probably got that DNA N from that shared D n A. So as long as you understand that, then you’ll understand how we use it for Genealogy research.

Diana (14m 41s):
Right? I know when I first approached my dad about it, he, he thought we were gonna dig up an ancestor. He is like, how are you gonna do that? And so it’s a valid question, how do we use our DNA to figure out our Ancestors? It’s really remarkable where we’ve come with this whole thing,

Nicole (14m 58s):
Right? So autosomal DNA tests are offered by several companies and the ones that are most reputable and most often used for Genealogical research include 23 and Me Ancestry, D N family tree, dna, N My Heritage DNA and Living dna. So I’m gonna talk briefly about each of those. So 23andme has a reputation for having the best ethnicity estimates. So if you’re really wanting to see more about which segments of DNA N came from which populations of the world, then that would be a great one to test with. They actually have a a unique ethnicity chromosome browser that shows which sections of your DNA came from which ethnic backgrounds.

Nicole (15m 42s):
They also have a lot of tools to help you see which segments of DNA share with your relatives. So that’s wonderful. And they have a pretty large database too. Ancestry D N A has the most family tree associated with the people who’ve taken D N A tests, which makes it easier to find your common ancestor with them. And they also have a huge database, over 20 million people. So we really recommend starting with Ancestry D N A or 23 and Me or both family tree DNA N is known for having useful analysis tools to compare and understand DNA N data. They also store DNA samples for up to 25 years, which can be helpful if you don’t have access to test that person again.

Nicole (16m 23s):
And you want to have another kind or part of their DNA N Tested. They also offer Mitochondrial and Y DNA tests. My Heritage DNA has a significant European customer base, so that can be really useful if you’re looking for matches in Europe, they have a neat analysis tool called the in-house auto cluster feature so that you can see your DNA matches put into groups or clusters. And Living DNA is based out of Great Britain, so they have very specific ethnicity estimates broken down to the regional level of the British Isles. And so this can be really helpful if you have ancestry from that area.

Diana (17m 4s):
Right? Thanks for taking us through each of those companies. I know I taught weeklong course at the Brigham Young University Education Week last August and it was all about beginning with DNA and every single class I would talk about the the different companies and not so much the companies but the types of dna. And by the end of the week, the top question was still, what kind of test should I take? And so it really made me realize that a lot of people are confused. You see all these ads and you just wonder, which one should I test with? What is the value? And so it’s just good to know. And personally I have tested on 23 and me and I had my mother test on 23 and me and then I had my mother do Ancestry DNA and I’ve done Ancestry DNA and then I’ve uploaded those also to family tree dna, my heritage and living dna.

Diana (17m 59s):
So the reason I did that is cuz my father had passed away before we could do autosomal DNA tests for him. So having my mother there who has since passed away, now I can, you know, see all the matches that don’t belong to her and know they’re my paternal matches. So it’s been really helpful to have that. So you know, just consider how you can get the best DNA for covering your Ancestors among your living family members and take the plunge and and have them test you. Test you wanna get your DNA into the databases if you’re gonna use it for Genealogy,

Nicole (18m 34s):
Right? I remember when we started getting people tested in our family and we didn’t really know what to do with the results, but we just knew we needed to get them all tested

Diana (18m 42s):
And so glad we did. Right?

Nicole (18m 43s):
Yeah, it’s been great to have all my grandparents except one test. Yeah.

Diana (18m 47s):
Well

Nicole (18m 47s):
Let’s talk about the Y chromosomal DNA and Mitochondrial DNA and then at the end of this episode we’ll go into a testing strategy so that if you do have that question of who to test, we’ll give you step by step. So Y chromosomal DNA N is inherited by men from their fathers. And so you’ll often hear the term patrilineal, meaning that it’s passed down from father to son, father to son in a line. Whereas autosomal DNA n that we talked about earlier is inherited from all of your Ancestors, from your parents, your four grandparents, your eight great-grandparents. And then of course, like we said, when you go back too far, some of those Ancestors didn’t contribute DNA to you, but they could have.

Nicole (19m 28s):
So back to why D n A, this is inherited only by males. So men can take the Y D N A test and it’s really useful for working on your surname line if you’re in a culture that has surnames passed from fathers to children. Sometimes though you may Discover that somewhere in your surname line there was a misattributed parentage event. And so if a male takes to A Y D N A test and his results come back and instead of matching all Smiths like he thought he would, he matches all Johnsons. That indicates that there may have been a misattributed parentage event somewhere in his patrilineal line, just meaning that somebody who thought their father was a smith didn’t know that like their father was someone else.

Nicole (20m 9s):
There’s a lot of reasons that kind of thing happened and it actually happened probably more frequently than most people realize. So in the Y D N A test, there’s two kinds of tests. There’s the S T R tests and the SNP test. So we’ve already kind of talked about single nucleotide polymorphisms, the SNPs. So first let’s talk about the Y D N A S T R tests and how that is different. So short tandem repeats are STRs are short regions of D N A where a small motif is repeated several times in a consecutive sequence, then those motifs are compared with other people and however many motifs you have versus somebody else, then you can kind of see a difference between you and that person.

Nicole (20m 54s):
So if I have 11 repeats on one area and another person has 13, then they have a genetic distance of two. So these differences are called mutations. And mutations occur when DNA n a is replicated before being passed on to the next generation. And mutations don’t always happen, you know, usually a father and a son will have the exact same Y D N A STRs, but sometimes you know, between the father and the son there will be a mutation. So that’s kind of how genetic distances estimated in a match list of Y D NST R tests, the genetic distance just reports how many mutations differentiate the two haplotypes.

Nicole (21m 36s):
And sometimes there will be sections of D N A that are fast mutating and so there may be, you know, two or three differences between you and a great-grandfather if you have like a second cousin who’s tested and you’re looking at the differences. And that could be that they are on fast mutating markers. So that’s something to be aware of in your Y D N A analysis. So family tree DNA offers Y D N A tests. They have the Y 12, Y 25, Y 37, Y 67 and Y one 11 levels. And those were all names of tests that were offered at different times by family tree D N A.

Nicole (22m 20s):
Now you can start off with either a Y 37 test or a Y one 11 test and those are the ones being offered. And then if you want to do a SNP test with your Y D N A, then you can take the big Y 700, which is a much more advanced test and it looks not just at, you know, 37 or 111 markers, but it tests the entire chromosome and all the SNPs. Well it tests 700 SNPs and it also tests many of the STRs even more than 111. So that’s the biggest Y chromosome test and I actually recommend that one just because it gives you your specific place on the Y D N A haplo tree and can be really useful.

Nicole (23m 9s):
It’s the science is really advancing in the big Y 700 test and it is more expensive, but there’s the potential to learn a lot more by taking that test, especially as the database grows. And at first when I had my father-in-law test on the big Y 700, he didn’t really have any matches there, but there’s been some new matches there that have come in. So it’s, it’s starting to be really helpful. There are other companies that look at the Y chromosome like 23andme and living d n a, they look at some of the SNPs on the Y chromosome, but they don’t test 700 SNPs like big Y. They don’t tell you how many SNPs SNPs they’re testing, but they do test enough to give you an estimate of what your Y DNA haplo group would be.

Nicole (23m 54s):
So living DNA N and 23andme can give you that estimate when you do their DNA N test

Diana (23m 59s):
And Y D N is a test that you can go further back much further back than those six to eight generations that on that autosomal can only do because that Y chromosome just keeps getting passed down through that direct line. And so we see a lot of people using that to try to connect their Smith that immigrated from England to Smiths in England. You know, that’s some of these surnames. It can be really helpful to have a lot of different people test and compare and especially if you upgrade to the big Y 700, find your unique place on that apple tree with your your group. So I think we’re just really starting to break open the possibilities of using Y D N E.

Diana (24m 42s):
And you know, one of my goals is to find a Y DNA test taker for each one of my lines. I have a lot long way to go. I only so far have my Schultz line, which was taken from the old Y dna so I have a new one coming. But that would be a wonderful goal, wouldn’t it? To have, have a Y DNA test taker for all your lines. Yeah, certainly would take some time and some money. Well let’s talk about Mitochondrial DNA because men are not the only ones that have the special DNA because women actually all people have Mitochondrial DNA, but only women pass it on. And so this is one that you can use for your female line. Same is why DNA 23 and men living DNA will give you a Mitochondrial DNA estimate.

Diana (25m 27s):
But if you test at family tree DNA for the full Mitochondrial DNA test, then you get a match list. And so that’s where you want to do your testing. There are not as many people in this database and so you’ll get matches. But the most useful way to use Mitochondrial is with targeted testing and to get a hypothesis of who you think your female ancestor might be. And then target tests some people that you have a track record, actually a proven line coming down the Mitochondrial line that you could see if your ancestor or you match. So something to remember about Mitochondrial DNA is that it mutates very, very slowly, much slower than why dna.

Diana (26m 11s):
And so your common ancestor could have lived hundreds or thousands of years ago. I know I’ve had some Mitochondrial DNA done on my lines from one of my cousins and when I look at the match list, none of the surnames are the same, which is to be expected because females change their surnames. You know, you don’t see that same surname pattern as with the wide line in that we have with the Western culture, but you have to realize that some of your matches are common ancestor could be so far back that you would never be able to find her. So that’s why we say it’s best for testing hypotheses. So if you do have an exact match at the full sequence, you could be related within a Genealogical timeframe.

Diana (26m 53s):
You know, it’s just more research in the documents trying to figure out where the connection could be. So Mitochondrial DNA, very useful, very unique.

Nicole (27m 3s):
Yeah, I like what you said about using it to test a hypothesis. It seems like you can get really conclusive results if you have two possible mothers for a woman, like say a man had two wives and you don’t know which one the daughter is descended from. While testing a descendant from each of those women can help you rule one of them out, right? And ruling somebody out is a very conclusive way of eliminating a conflicting hypothesis and helping you establish proof of the other person, right?

Diana (27m 36s):
That’s such a common problem when you know that there was a second wife and you don’t have the exact date of birth for your ancestor because you know, sometimes it’s just an estimate. And so that’s, that’s a great way to use Mitochondrial DNA,

Nicole (27m 50s):
Right? But we can’t always rule somebody in or conclusively prove them because their Mitochondrial DNA matches because there could be other reasons for that. You know, they could maybe be like other relationship with a common ancestor for their back in time. So it’s, it’s tricky to know exactly what it, what you can learn from it. But you can definitely get a lot of clues. You can rule things out very conclusively and you can test those hypotheses,

Diana (28m 16s):
Right? I think with DNA we have to remember we’re often trying to disprove something as much as prove it. You know it, it is science and that is the scientific method to disprove every hypothesis until you have only one standing that it can be

Nicole (28m 32s):
Right. It’s time for a word from our Sponsor, did your ancestor disappear from vital records? Maybe they moved or got married. newspapers.com can help you find them and tell their stories. Or have you ever had trouble figuring out how people tie into your family tree? Newspapers are filled with birth notices, marriage announcements, and obituaries. Items like these are a great resource for determining family relationships. On newspapers.com. You can explore more than 800 million newspaper pages from across the us, uk, Canada, and beyond in just seconds. Their easy to use search feature lets you filter your results by date, location, a specific paper and more.

Nicole (29m 15s):
When you find something interesting, the newspapers.com clipping tool makes it a snap to share it with family and friends. You can even save it directly to your ancestry tree For listeners of this podcast, newspapers.com is offering new subscribers, 20% off a Publisher Extra subscription. So you can start exploring today, Just use the code FamilyLocket at checkout. Okay, well let’s talk about X chromosomal dna. Remember that the X chromosome is one of the sex chromosomes and both men and women have an X chromosome. Women have two Xes men have one because they also have the Y and the X chromosome has a unique inheritance pattern.

Nicole (29m 57s):
So it’s really useful because you can figure out exactly which Ancestors could have contributed your XD N to you. So then you have a list of possible Ancestors that you could have inherited that DNA from to help you find the common ancestor with an XD N match. What’s Recommended is that you use XD N along with autosomal DNA N to help you figure out common Ancestors with your matches who you share XD N with. If you’re a male, then your X matches can help you learn if your matches maternal or not, because you’re not gonna get an XMA with somebody from your father’s side, only from your mother’s side. Another thing to be aware of with X D N A is that it has a high probability of false matches for small segments, which are generally under 10 to 15 cents.

Nicole (30m 45s):
So if you only share 8 cents with somebody on the X chromosome, it might be a false match. So if you’re sharing a significant portion of X D A, at least 10 to 20 cents, then you can look at your list of possible XD n a Ancestors and see if you can find common Ancestors with them.

Diana (31m 0s):
Yeah, the X D A is really fun to explore and a really good thing to do is to look at a chart of the X D A inheritance for the male and for the female. And Blaine Beninger has got these charts on his blog post titled, unlocking the Genealogical Secrets of the X Chromosome 2008 is when he published that. And we also have the charts in our book with his permission because it’s just a little tricky. It’s really important to know which Ancestors you could have inherited the X chromosome from. So on my pedigree chart on my wall, I actually went through and put an X on everybody that I could get an X from.

Diana (31m 40s):
It’s really neat when you can use it, but it is a little

Nicole (31m 43s):
Tricky, right? And not every company tells about X matches either, so that that makes it harder to use too,

Diana (31m 50s):
Right? Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about informed consent. So we all have heard the stories about someone finding out their father’s not their father or their grandfather’s, not their grandfather, or you know, these stories are gonna happen to everybody because eventually back on the family tree, you’re going to find a surprise. So it’s really important that when we ask someone to Take a DNA Test for us, that we have them know what they’re getting into. And a good way to do that is to really discuss with them the long-term implications of taking a DNA test that there could be an unknown relative discovered, or some family connections are not biological.

Diana (32m 33s):
And so you can write up a simple informed consent and give that to, to them, talk with them about it, have them sign it just so that they know because the last thing you want to do is have someone Take a DNA Test for you and then you have to break the news to them as something pretty close that is unexpected. And so you can do that through email, you can give it to ’em in person, but it’s just a good practice whenever you are doing DNA testing. And it’s also really important to look at the DNA testing companies, privacy policies and just make sure you understand how your genetic data could be used and only use the companies where you feel comfortable with that.

Diana (33m 16s):
If you are worried about your data, then read carefully the privacy policies,

Nicole (33m 22s):
Right? And often those privacy policies are contained in their terms of service. So read those carefully so that you know what they will do. And some companies are going to be sharing with law enforcement and other companies won’t. So if that’s something that you want to watch out for, then do some research. All right, so lastly, today we’ll talk about a testing strategy. So like we mentioned, the two autosomal DNA tests that are most popular, that have the most people in their database are Ancestry and 23andme. So we recommend that the first autosomal DNA test that you take is the ancestry test, and then take the 20 23andme test after that. And after you’ve got those done and you’ve got your results back, you can download your raw DNA data from either Ancestry or 23andme.

Nicole (34m 8s):
And then you can go ahead and upload it to family tree dna. My Heritage and JED Match. Jed matches a third party website that allows you to find matches across different companies and they have a lot of different tools including XD N, but make sure that you’re comfortable with their terms of service before you upload there. So after you’ve uploaded to those companies, then you can think about if you wanna take the living DNA n a test or you can also upload your raw DNA N there, then take a Y D N A test or ask a male in your family to do that. Then take a Mitochondrial DNA test. So there’s the strategy that we recommend and then some tips are to test those who are generationally closer to the Ancestors.

Nicole (34m 49s):
And that’s typically the oldest generation in your family. And if you don’t have both of your parents to test, then you can test siblings. Your siblings will have some unique segments that you didn’t get from that parent who didn’t test. That’s because each parent randomly gives half of their DNA to each child and they might have gotten a different half. You know, you only need to test your siblings and yourself if both of your parents didn’t test, if both of your parents tested, then you and your siblings DNA N a is just redundant from your parents. Also, a tip that we mentioned earlier is to test your first cousins, your second cousins, your third cousins. And doing this allows you to isolate certain family lines, you know, your first great grandparents, second great grandparents, and figure out the matches that are on that line,

Diana (35m 35s):
Right? That’s a great strategy. Strategy. And you know, now that we have so many people who have done DNA testing, I would even recommend that you really look carefully and see which of your lines are represented. For instance, I have a lot of my cousins on my mother’s side who have tested already. I didn’t have to ask them, they just have their DNA out there. and I could ask them to share their ancestry DNA results with me, and I would have access to all of their matches as well. But I have some other lines on my father’s side that we don’t have much coverage for. And so I need to try to find some people who are living that could Take a DNA Test to represent those lines.

Diana (36m 18s):
So as you get more comfortable with using your DNA or looking at your matches, you can really kind of look and see where you need to get some more DNA test takers for your family tree.

Nicole (36m 28s):
Yes. And sometimes you won’t have anybody, you know, especially if you come from small families or if you descend from an only child of an only child, you may not have a lot of cousins and that’s okay. You just do your best,

Diana (36m 38s):
Right? And you just broaden out and reach out. Go up another generation and broaden out to other family members. See what you can find. And that is the beauty of testing, because I have found so many cousins that I didn’t know about and connected with them through DNA and we’ve met in person and we now sent Christmas cards. You know it. It really is a neat way to even find your family. Well, let’s finish up this podcast episode with your task. So each chapter in the book, Research Like, a Pro DNA has a task for you to do. And so your task for this episode for this week is to Take a DNA Test and upload the raw data to other DNA websites that accept uploads and following the strategy we just outlined.

Diana (37m 23s):
Then to explore the website of each DNA testing company that you’re using and familiarize yourself with the features. Just be warned, each one is very different. So just get used to it, click on things, see what each one will do for you. And then know that every company website has some kind of a help site. They have a learning center, they have forums, they have blog posts, they recognize that people need help navigating their website. So say you’ve had your DNA testing at 23 and me and you look at it and it’s so foreign to you, is so different from Ancestry that you just haven’t done much with that. Well, it can be a goal to really learn how to use it and how to explore the many tools and wonderful features and the same goals for each, each testing website.

Diana (38m 13s):
They all have different features. You can learn so much, but you have to get familiar with them and

Nicole (38m 19s):
It’s fun. You know, I love learning about each of the features at the testing company websites and just playing around with things, seeing what they have, just learning about the past, about genetics and about history. They offer so many helpful reports and and information so, and they’re always updating things. So it’s just exciting. It’s a fun field to be part of and we’re excited to be doing this series and we hope that as you listen, you will follow along in the book and follow along with the tasks so that you can learn how to Research Like a Pro with DNA.

Diana (38m 51s):
All right, well everyone have a great week and we’ll talk to you next time. Bye-bye

Nicole (38m 55s):
Bye. Thank you for listening. We hope that something you heard today will help you make progress in your research. If you want to learn more, purchase our books, Research Like, a Pro and Research Like a Pro with DNA on amazon.com and other book sellers. You can also register for our online courses or study groups of the same names. Learn more at FamilyLocket dot com slash services. To share your progress and ask questions, join our private Facebook group by sending us your book receipt or joining our courses to get updates in your email inbox each Monday. Subscribe to our newsletter at FamilyLocket dot com slash newsletter. Please Subscribe rate and review our podcast. We read each of you and are so thankful for them. We hope you’ll start now to Research Like a Pro.