What DNA test for genealogy purposes gives you the most bang for your buck?Tracing your family tree?

There are 3 types of DNA and it is according to your purpose.

Y DNA passes from father to son only.

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

Autosomal you get 50-50 from both parents. Now when you get back to your grandparents it will not be 25% each. You get 50% from your paternal grandparents and 50% from your maternal grandparents. However, it will not be an even breakdown between grandmother and grandfather on both sides of the family. How you inherited this bias will not be how your siblings inherited it unless you have an identical twin.

If you are involved in Genealogy and wish to match yourself with other family trees, Y & Mitochondrial are what people use for that purpose as they both go back in a straight line virtually unchanged.

Those are the 2 types of testing Ancestry.Com does. Now it represent a very tiny part of your total ancestry. You have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great grandparents, 16 great great grandparents and so on. If you are a male in each generation you would get your Y from only one person. If you are male or female in each generation you would get your Mitochondrial from only one person. For instance, if you are male and you have both done, by the time you get back to your 16 great grandparents, both will not include 14 of them. However, if you are successful in matching yourself with other family trees, you will no doubt discover some of the left out people.

There are many companies that does this type of testing. One 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. However, you come from a vast myriad of family lines.

One company that does this type of testing has the largest data base and you can bring their results forward to Ancestry.Com's website.

It is

http://www.familytreedna.com/

When you go into their website, if you go under "Feedback" there is a way you can email them and ask questions.

It is more complicated to use Autosomal DNA for genealogy. However, there is one company that will match you with population groups throughout the world. They will not tell you that you are 1/2 of something, 1/4 of something else and 1/4 of another something else.

They probably can't do that as there are no pure nationalities, races or ethnicities. The same DNA crosses national, racial and ethnic boundaries. What they will do is show you your top 20 matches in descending order. The company that does this is

http://www.dnatribes.com/

When you go into their website if you go under "Feedback" there is a way you can email them and ask questions.

Now, I asked 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."

Also I asked them if they could break it down by parents 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 give you an analysis. I had to send my results from them to DNATribes.

Here are a couple of more links that explain DNA

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

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

I am in a Surname group which has answered some questions about our paper documentation and in some cases it as created new questions. Since it is a surname group and uses yDNA, only males can participate or females that have a close male donor such as their brother or uncle. There is also an option to compare our DNA to a larger database with other names.

Our group is with Family Tree DNA at http://www.familytreedna.com/ and it has been a good choice for our purpose. So, to determine what test would give you the "most bang for your buck" you would need to know specifically what your expectations were in the beginning.

DNA analysis is an excellent tool used in conjunction with traditional genealogy but DNA analysis can only do so much and you need to be aware of it limitations.

What your quality grandfather was once in 1930 has little relating what one ancestor was once in 1500. Five hundred years in the past you had many ancestors and getting again that a long way is particularly tricky. How are you able to be ninety% Fijian and one hundred% American? That is a hundred ninety%.