DNA Ancestry - Best bang for the buck?

Since you are thinking of using DNA testing to determine American Indian Ancestry, It would be a waste of money.

Your mother’s mtDNA would not show any of her father’s Y chromosome DNA. Therefore if there was any American Indian Ancestry it would not show up by testing of her mtDNA.

If you were tested you could be tested for your mothers mtDNA (no American Indian Ancestry) and your father’s Y chromosome DNA (no Indian American Ancestry).

So you can see that there is no point in being tested.

Any American Indian Ancestry in your maternal father's line will not show up.

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The autosomal DNA test will reveal all your genetic makeup back to all 16 of your GG grandparents , four generations.

THe company that does the test is DNA tribes, they send a test kit our to you and you swab the inside of your mouth and send the sample back for analysis. The test costs around US$250. You can opt for the Y or/& mito test but these will only put you in haplogroups, that is where your ancestors migrated out of Africa 100,000 years ago. These test will not show your genetic makeup.

However I did have my haplogroup tested and it is an Arabic haplogroup and then my mom had her autosomal tested with DNA tribes and we actually do have Arabic and Egyptian ehtnicities recently in our ancestry. You choose but at the very least I would recomend you have your autosomal tested and your mom too if she will.

Boys can be tested for both mtDNA and yDNA. Your mother (sister, whomever) could only be tested for mtDNA. In otherwords, you would not gain anything by having your mother tested.

As to which site, I recommend www.familytreedna.com, billed as the oldest, largest, and best such site. I used it and it claims I have ancestors from all over Europe (backed up by the paper trail), Native Americans (also backed up by paper trail) and practically worldwide.

So, give it a try. Their site has tutorials and newsletters to help you.

I don't think any DNA test will show that specifically.

There are DNA tests and they don't require blood as all your body tissues and fluids contain your DNA.

There are 3 types of DNA

Y which goes from father to son only.

Mitochondrial which goes from mother to both sons and daughters but only the daughters pass it on to their children.

Autosomal which you get 50-50 from both parents but when you get back to your grandparents it will not be 25-25-25-25. You get 50% from your paternal grandparents and 50% from your maternal grandparents but it will not be an even breakdown between grandmother and grandfather in both cases. How you inherited this bias will not necessarily be how your siblings inherited it unless you have an identical twin.

People use Y & Mitochondrial in genealogy as they both go back in a straight line virtually unchanged. However they represent a teeny weeny part of your total ancestry. If a person involved in family history uses it to match themselves with other family trees, they stand a chance of discovering even the left out ancestors. One company that only uses Y & Mitochondrial advertises they will help you "discover your deep ancestral roots." It is true in those 2 lines only, they will assign you to a Haplogroup based on your DNA and show you the origin of your nomadic ancestor going back thousands of years. But you come from a vast myriad of family lines. You have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great grandparents, 16 great great grandparents. It doubles up each generation you go back. If you were a male you get your Y from only one person in each generation and if you are male and female you get your Mitochondrial from only one person in each generation. But if you are successful in matching yourself with other family trees along with research, you no doubt will discover some of the left out people. You have to use it in conjunction with family research. Here is a link to a website that does Y & Mitochondrial for this purpose.

http://www.familytreedna.com/

Using Autosomal DNA for genealogy is too complicated, at least at present. However, there is one company in the U.S. I know of that will take you Autosomal and match you with population groups throughout the world. They have over 900 batches of 100-150 samples of DNA.

They won't tell you that you are 1/2 of something, 1/4 of something else and 1/4 of another something else. They can't do that as the same DNA crosses national, racial and ethnic boundaries. There are no pure nationalities, races or ethnicities.

What they will do is give you your matches starting with the top in descending order. The company is

http://www.dnatribes.com/

When you go into their website if you click on Feedback at the top there is a way you can email them and ask questions.

Most of your DNA is Autosomal. You get 23 chromosomes each from both parents. The two that determine a person's sex, one from each parent, are the ones made up of Y & Mitochondrial. The other 44, 22 from each parent are made up of your Autosomal DNA. Autosomal is what determines your appearance such as your pigmentation, height, bone structure.

Now, I ask DNATribes if my sister with whom I share both parents had the same Autosomal Test would her results be the same and they replied:

"Two siblings will each obtain unique results. Family members do typically share some regional or ethnic genetic affiliations, but in some cases matches can vary substantially between siblings."

I would imagine this is because of the differences of what we inherit from our grandparents.

Also I asked DNATribes if they could break it down between my father and my mother and they replied:

"To isolate each parent's genetic contribution in each case, it is necessary to test at least one parent as well. "

Now, FamilyTreeDNA does do Autosomal testing but they will not provide you with any type of analysis. I think at one time they did. I had to send my results from them to DNATribes.

Here are a couple of more links explaining DNA

http://www.smgf.org/pages/how_it_works.jspx

http://www.pa.msu.edu/~sciencet/ask_st/060293.html

here's a novel idea. Take that money,spend it on GAS and go to your tribe.

DNA can only show , YES or NO that you have 'markers' but not what tribe. and in the end it's no good for enrollment anyhow.