Taking an ancestry DNA test can reveal many secrets regarding you and your family. People use DNA tests for many reasons, such as they want to have knowledge about a specific ancestor of their lineage or they want to have general knowledge about their backgrounds. Additionally, there are also some facial recognition services that are provided by many organizations that can determine whether two persons are related or not with the help of images. However, there are some people who would want to look for their ancestry through the mother’s side, the maternal lineage, or from the father’s side, the paternal lineage.
Maternal and paternal lineage tracing:
Going through the maternal or paternal line means that you are only searching the specific side of your family, like your mother’s side or the father’s side. For instance, if you are looking for maternal lineage, that means you would go through data regarding your mother, her mother, and the list goes on. On the other hand, if you are looking into your paternal lineage, you will see the data associated with your father, his father, and so on.
There are many reasons why you should research your family this way. Some genealogists state that this approach simplifies things as every generation is way larger when you go back. When choosing a specific line, the analyzing and evaluating process becomes simple. There can be other reasons, such as inheritance that are transferred from father or mother to sons or daughters, and certain religious or tribal identities like noble titles.
Whatever you are looking for, whether you are going towards the maternal line or paternal line, a DNA test will surely help you, but what test should you take? And which DNA test would be suitable for maternal and paternal testing?
Different types of DNA tests:
There are many kinds of ancestry DNA tests available. The three most popular tests are autosomal DNA, mtDNA, and Y-DNA.
The autosomal DNA test evaluates only autosomes. These are chromosomes in your body, but these are not sex chromosomes. These chromosomes have the DNA code that is transferred from both of your parents in a random way. Hence an autosomal genetic test won’t tell you about which parent has transferred the particular DNA sequence. However, this specific test covers a lot of range than other test types as this test result has information regarding both sides of your family.
The Y DNA tests look for DNA code that is only located in the Y chromosome. This specific chromosome is only found in the male lineage. As a result, you can only inherit this chromosome from your father and not your mother. Hence this test will generate results that are associated with the paternal lineage of your family. However, this test has a downside as it can only be performed on males only.
The mtDNA test looks for the genetic code that is located in the mitochondrion. Most of our DNA can be found in the nucleus or the center of the cell; however, it can also be found on different sides of the cell as the mitochondrion. This part is specifically transferred from mother to child. As a result, the mtDNA test will give you information that is totally related to your maternal lineage.
You might be thinking if a woman can trace down her paternal lineage:
Yes, even if a person is female, they can still trace their paternal lineage through a Y-DNA test as they have two options when going for paternal lineage:
Autosomal DNA test:
As stated before, this test can be performed on both sexes and also cover a wide range of grounds.
Y-DNA test for male relative:
The other option is for a woman can convince their close male relative to take the Y-DNA test.
However, if you are looking for cheap relationship testing services, you can also see our face recognition services, as it only uses images to identify if someone is related to you or not. Moreover, our ancestry DNA testing capability is also great for lineage data.
