North Bay Woman

38 NORTH BAY WOMAN | S P R I N G 2 0 1 8 By Judith M. Wilson F amily trees are fascinating, but it's always been a chal- lenge to unearth information about earlier generations and track one's roots accurately. In days past, it often meant poring through old records and letters, perusing dusty photos albums or relying on the fading memory of an aging rel- ative to get clues. Times, though, have changed. Thanks to 21st century tech- nology, DNA testing is easily accessible, and, as a result, more people are doing it and discovering that the quest to put leaves on the branches of a family tree can yield surprising results. Ancestry.com Inc. and 23andMe are two of the most popular do-it-yourself DNA testing services. Ancestry, located in Lehi, Utah, puts the focus on gene- alogy and family history. By analyzing a saliva sample, it determines where in the world an individual's DNA comes from and provides infor- mation on ethnicity and people who share the same lineage. 23andMe, a biotechnology company based in Mountain View, offers a choice of two kits — Ancestry or Health + Ancestry. The first reports family origins, much like Ancestry, and the second identifies the risk for certain conditions, such as Parkin- son's disease, macular degeneration and late-onset Alzheimer's disease. It also reveals if a person is a carrier of a disease such as sickle cell anemia or cystic fibrosis. The number in its name refers to the 23 pairs of chromosomes in a normal human cell, and science is its priority. The company gives participants the opportunity to make their results available for medical research purposes, and 80 percent give their consent. Michelle Reardon of Novato used Ancestry to find out more about her heritage and found it easy. She received a kit in the mail, simply spit into a tube and sent it back. She got the results about a month later and says, "I have pages and pages of information." As more people do the testing, more matches appear, and An- cestry keeps sending them to her. The matches brought a surprising discovery. She'd done a family tree in high school, but "My tree had one wrong branch," she explains. Her mother was an only child, who grew up believing her father had died before she was born. The results from Ancestry, however, showed matches for people Reardon didn't know, and so she encouraged her mother to have her DNA tested too. It turned out that the man who was supposedly her father wasn't. Her real father hadn't died and had a family in Indiana, thus the matches. "My grandmother lied," she says. Joyce Bell Albert, of Tiburon, had her DNA tested using a kit from 23andMe in the early days of do-it-yourself testing. She was interested in genealogy, but on a flight home from Albu- querque she began a conversation with another passenger who had done testing and found a rare variant in her genetic struc- ture that indicated a disposition for a rare, difficult-to-diagnose Leaves on the branches of a family tree can yield surprising results DNA Testing Ancestry DNA kit. – Photo provided by Ancestry

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