Curious about your Genealogical Origins?

The Genographic Project can help. Writing in the Arizona Daily Star, Dan Sorenson describes how the Genographic Project can trace your ancestry back tens of thousands of years for a cost of $99.95. To be sure, you will not obtain any ancestor's name or even a birth record, but you will obtain a report showing a high probability of where the ancestors lived.

According to Sorenson:

Human history is unfolding one cheek swab at a time in a cluttered, windowless laboratory deep in the University of Arizona's Biological Sciences West Building. Although geneticists and anthropologists long ago determined that we all have origins in Africa, there is much to be learned from our DNA about where we went from there.

A cast of about 30 undergraduate UA biology students, technicians and the lab manager deftly dance around one another in the cramped space, like waiters and chefs in a busy kitchen, processing the DNA to do just that — for participants in National Geographic Society's Genographic Project.

After extracting DNA from participants' samples and putting it into a usable form it is analyzed, using special software. The software looks for mutations, essentially "spelling errors" in DNA. These markers are repeated — along with others picked up later — in descendants' DNA, creating a trail.

You can read the full article at http://www.azstarnet.com/dailystar/161891.

My thanks to Christina Humphreys for telling me about this article.

Comments

[Nancy Hamilton]

Is there any possibility for anyone that has recently done their DNA for a specific name group for genealogy purposes to have that info switched over to or sent to the National Geographic project? It seems a waste of money to duplicate what we have already done, but would like to help out in the National Geographic project as well. Thanks, Nancy nbhamil@msn.com

[Penny Hartzell]

It's my understanding that Family Tree DNA run by Greenspan has made a connection with the National Geographic project. He also uses the U of A facility for his testing. Check out Family Tree DNA website.
Penny