Genetic Genealogy identifies parent of fetus?

If you are looking for a medical science fiction thriller, Genesis may be of interest. This would be particularly true if you are a fan of Robin Cook from reading some of his earlier thirty or so medical crime novels. Published last month Genesis can stretch your mind a bit about the potential of genetic genealogy to solve crimes and not just cold crimes.

If you are not familiar with Cook's genre, he takes an emerging technology and fictionalizes its use or abuse when applied to medical practice. For example about five years ago he wrote Cell about using cell phones to advance personalized health care.  

In Genesis his protagonist is a brilliant but antisocial pathology resident who stumbles into genetic genealogy as she tries to identify a killer who has attempted to cover his tracks by masking them as fentanyl laced opioid overdoses. Armed only with Blaine Bettinger's The Family Tree Guide to DNA Testing and Genealogy and Tamar Weinberg's The Adoptee's Guide to DNA Testing: How to Use Genetic Genealogy to Discover Your Long-Lost Family she steamrolls in search of her killer who may be the father of a 10 week old fetus discovered during the autopsy of his mother.

From Cook's epilogue:

“Let’s look on the bright side,” he said.”

“I’m having trouble seeing the bright side,” Laurie said.

“It seems that you and Aria Nichols have added genetic genealogy to the forensic grab bag of tricks to make it possible to construct a perpetrator’s genome. If that’s not a bright side, I don’t know what is.”

That's enough of a spoiler.

 

Don't Forget The Older Generation! I did.

When you are deciding who in your family to DNA test, don't forget the older generation. I did in my post a couple weeks ago. Within minutes of my post Blaine Bettinger and Dave Nicolson illuminated that blind spot. Blaine commented,

If you can't test both parents, of course - I've tested both my parents and thus haven't tested my siblings. There's a few reasons to do so even though, as Tim Janzen points out for phasing purposes, but these are for very advanced phasing purposes.

Dave added,

Siblings of your parents are fair game for this same analysis (unless you have THEIR parents tested  I have a tested parent, a tested uncle, and an untested parent and aunt... Hoping mom and her sister will be willing to test, to fill out that generation...

When recording the information that can illuminate your family history, the autosomal DNA of your family's oldest generation gives the longest view back into your ancestry. I wrote the earlier post with my own personal blinders firmly in place. By the dawn of atDNA testing for the general public in 2010, I was the older generation in my family. To compound my situation. I am an only child and therefore have no siblings to test.

From that perspective I was challenged by Judy Russell and Thomas Jones at RootsTech 2014. Judy very effectively demonstrated how knowledge of our family members can disappear forever within 3 generations unless we care enough to record and preserve it. Dr. Jones likened DNA to the oral histories that too often disappear unrecorded with each of the members of the older generation of our families as they pass on. 

So far no one has challenged the math of "Should I Test My Siblings Also?" There is still plenty of time to help me refine my calculations in that post. In the meantime I will throw some more out to you to review.


Testing Parents vs Testing Siblings

First let me say this is not an either/or proposition if you are fortunate enough to have a choice of family members to test. Today atDNA tests are relatively inexpensive but cost is always an issue. How do you set testing priorities?


Blaine was correct. If you are fortunate enough to have autosomal test reports on both your parents, testing your sibling will only be of minimal value. Also Dave made a very good point about the importance of collecting the autosomal DNA of your uncles and aunts. The recombination of autosomal DNA through the generations quickly begins to make it difficult to trace shared segments back to commons ancestors. Every generation the person being tested is closer to that common ancestor, the more certain we can be about our conclusions.  

With yDNA and mtDNA that focus is not lost as quickly as the generations pass. However, it does become more difficult to find the right family member(s) to test to trace some of our lines. 

Finding Family: My Search for Roots and the Secrets of My DNA

I just finished Richard Hill's new book "FINDING FAMILY: My Search for Roots and the Secrets of My DNA." 

Blaine Bettinger who blogs as "The Genetic Genealogist" Published an excellent review that I just read after I had read the book myself.  I agree with everything Blaine said -- including the small criticism about the difficulty at a few points of following all the bit players without a scorecard. In this regard I hope Richard will consider inserting brief diagrams (dare I say pedigree charts) of some of the families he encountered along his quest to find his biological parents.

Even though I heard Richard recount this story as recently as last November, the twist at the end of the book was a surprise that kept me reading far too late into the night until I had finished the heartwarming saga. The story is engaging and those involved with DNA testing and/or traditional genealogy can learn much from the process and missteps Richard encounter along the way. Birth parents and adoptees searching for each other can learn many techniques and receive inspiration. Read and learn.

Your Genetic Genealogist: "Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr." - DNA in The First Two Episodes

CeCe Moore blogged in depth about the first two episodes Henry Louis Gates' new series about finding roots which appeared last night on public television. I saw the first episode last night and will watch the second today. If you share my interest in genealogy and the application of DNA findings to amplify family history research, you should enjoy this series on public television. 


Your Genetic Genealogist: "Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr." - DNA in The First Two Episodes:


You will also find the preview from The Genetic Genealogist to be both interesting and provocative. Blaine Bettinger's excellent blog is easily confused with CeCe's Your Genetic Genealogist. Both these blogs help us all try to keep up with new developments in the rapidly developing expanding field of genetic genealogy.