All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
SERVICE
The Gist: Find Yourself And Your Kinfolk On The Family Tree
$219
My father always claimed our family descended from Scottish nobility. But that never made sense. Why would my grandfather abandon a regal life in Edinburgh to become an immigrant factory worker in Cleveland? So, I was curious when I received my packet from Family Tree DNA, a Houston-based outfit that works with the University of Arizona and other labs to analyze the DNA in cheek cells, and then compares the results to samples in its database. For the base price, Family Tree offers Y chromosome testing for men, or the older mitochondrial DNA test, which shows variation in the mother's genetic material, for men and women. If there's a match, two submitters share a common ancestor. Voilà ! A new branch of the family tree.
The kit itself is simple: two swabs and two small vials half-filled with a preserving liquid. I simply scraped the swabs around the inside of my cheek for a few seconds, placed each in a vial, and mailed them off. In my case, technicians looked at 12 preselected locations on the male Y chromosome and checked for alleles, or variations. Because such variations occur in patterns and these patterns have been documented in genetic databases, it's possible to estimate whether two people have a common relative and - roughly - how far back in the tree.
Six weeks later, I received a certificate and a three-page explanation of relationship probabilities. The certificate featured two rows of numbers: 1 through 12 for the chromosome loci, and 5s, 6s, 7s, and 8s representing each allele. No lost family fortune, no exciting relationship to Robert the Bruce. Because I was writing a magazine review, I also received a letter from founder Bennett Greenspan, explaining that I am part of the Western Atlantic Modal Haplotype, hunters and gatherers who settled Western Europe about 16,000 years ago. He told me I perfectly matched another submitter, meaning all 12 alleles agreed. When I contacted the other guy, we couldn't think of an obvious connection in our family trees.
Fascinating, but you might want to skip it unless you are a fanatical genealogist. The test kit is costly. A match means there's only a 50 percent chance of sharing an ancestor within 14.5 generations, and there are currently only 500 people in Family Tree's database. And the company says it will keep half the chromosome locations it analyzes a secret until a few research papers have been completed. But you could ask people you think you might be related to, such as those with the same last name, to submit their sample before you head to that big reunion. Who knows?
Available for $299 is additional Y-testing for Cohanim (ancestry to Aaron, brother of Moses), and for $319, mtDNA-testing for Native American roots.
Family Tree DNA: www.familytreedna.com.
STREET CRED
E-Motion 360 Trek Pack Plus
Just for Fun, by Linus Torvalds and David Diamond; Rebel Code, by Glyn Moody
Gasaraki, Volumes 1-4
CubicEye
Mobile Monitor
eyemodule2
Y and mtDNA Chromosome Testing
ReadMe
Music
Showdown
Cyborg Citizen: Politics in the Posthuman Age, by Chris Hables Gray
TravelMate 739TLV
Just Outta Beta
orbiTouch
Startup.com
Contributors
