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Several companies now take that for as minuscule as $ 100 and a swab of the interior cheek , they can reveal a person ’s folk Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree and ancestral native land .
But more than a dozen scientists from various background knowledge say such " amateur genetic science " or " toilet table tryout " have pregnant scientific restriction and bank on misconception about race andgenetics .
DNA Tests of Illegally Traded Ivory Could Save
" If a test - taker is just interested in finding out where there are some hoi polloi in the world that share the same DNA as them , then these tests can certainly tell them that , " articulate Deborah Bolnick of the University of Texas in Austin . " But they ’re not travel to severalise you every place or every mathematical group in the creation where citizenry portion out your DNA . Nor will they of necessity be able to assure you exactly where your antecedent lived or [ what airstream or societal chemical group ] they distinguish with . "
Bolnick and the other researchers expressed present their psychoanalysis in the Oct. 19 issue of the journalScience .
A popular trend
More than 460,000 citizenry have purchase genetic ancestry tests in the past six years , consort to a recent study . That trend is likely to increase , scientists say , fuel by hyped promises from companies sell the tests and by intelligence stories about test - takers such as Oprah Winfrey learning she is Zulu or a Floridian accountant being say he descended from the Mongolian warlord Genghis Khan .
But such results are beyond the capacity of current test , scientists say . In the Genghis Khan example , the company that performed the run , Oxford Genetics , did not have DNA samples from theMongolwarlord himself because his grave has never been see .
Instead , the fellowship come up that the accountant had a readiness of genetic mark very common in masses from Eurasia , and in particular in the areas where Genghis Khan suppress . The rest was illation .
" There ’s nothing to really tie it to him , " Bolnick said . " It could have been some other hombre alive at the meter who slept around a lot . "
Hyped promise
Most inherited bloodline tests take the psychoanalysis of small snippets ofDNApassed down only through the mother , or only through the sire . These trial can identify link individual who share a common parental or paternal ancestor , and even where in the world people with your familial theme song experience today .
A common misconception about genetic ancestry testing , Bolnick say , is that it can unwrap information about an individual ’s parentage . It can not .
" People assume these tests can tell you your race or ethnicity and reveal on the nose where your antecedent live or on the dot what social group they identified with , " she said .
Recently , the entanglement siteAncestry.comrolled out a new service that countenance the great unwashed to send in desoxyribonucleic acid samples to see if they have " genetic first cousin " in the company ’s database and reveal their ancient line .
One problem with this plan of attack , scientists say , is that because such tests psychoanalyze less than 1 percent of a person ’s genome , they will overleap most of a person ’s relatives .
" If you take a mitochondrial desoxyribonucleic acid test , you take something about your female parent ’s female parent ’s female parent ’s lineage , " Bolnick said . " If you go back 10 generations , that ’s say you something about only one out of more than a thousand ancestors . "
Such trial run also can not account for recent migration of people from their ancient homelands . " Present - daytime patterns of mansion house are rarely identical to what survive in the past , and societal groups have changed over time , in name and composition , " the scientist write .
Bolnick and her colleagues encourage professional genic and anthropological associations to issue insurance statements about transmitted ancestry examination that exhort either carefulness on the part of consumers or put limits on the claims company can make .
" in person , I would care to see some independent source of data about these exam so consumer could go somewhere besides the companies themselves and get entropy about what the test can and can not tell them , " Bolnick said .
