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& # 39; Know your roots. & # 39; This is how genetic sequencing companies try to convince ordinary citizens to buy DNA tests that can be found even in pharmacies. But do they deliver what they promise?
& # 39; Know your roots. & # 39; This is how genetic sequencing companies try to convince ordinary citizens to buy DNA tests that can be found even in pharmacies. But do they deliver what they promise?
Who does not want to know who his ancestors were? Or at least, that's what they promise.
These kits can be purchased at many pharmacies and also on the websites of specialized companies and even from Amazon. And they are becoming cheaper: if, about five years ago, a kit cost about $ 300, you can now buy them at $ 75.
The tests were even the best-selling products in November in the United States during the latest Black Friday, according to Amazon data.
Functioning of DNA Tests
The test that promises to reveal who they are. our ancestors work as follows: you buy the kit, you spit it into a tube or you pbad a cotton swab inside the cheek and you send the sample to the company from which you made call to the service.
The company extracts from its salivary cells. which contain all his genome. Your DNA is then inserted into a database and compared to the genome of other clients who have paid for the same service. These similarities and differences are thus established and an ethnic map created. But what is the reliability of these tests?
Distorted information
Scientists warn that, in fact, the genetic profiles obtained through these tests can not provide very accurate information about our ancestors. In the BBC program The Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry, and an interview with geneticist Mark Thomas, these genetic tests were examined.
"Many of these societies have reported to you on ethnicity, so they do not really tell who their ancestors are, but whether their genetic characteristics match some of their ancestors' descendants," Thomas said.
Usually, this type of test does not compare its DNA to that of people who lived in the past, but with those of their contemporaries.
But the comparison is limited to the people who are in the database of the society, so that the reading of their genome can "Elisa Frota-Pessôa, pioneer of the physics in Brazil
Favorite Ancestors
] People have preferences regarding their ancestors.Thomas explains that it's more appealing and more exotic to say that his ancestors were Vikings or Celtic kings for example that the Gaulish
But the truth is that in Europe, almost all Europeans who do not have a recent migratory past are
"Going back in time, up to the point of time. At the time when the Vikings lived, a European will surely discover that one of his ancestors was Scandinavian, as these people occupied a large territory and arrived north of Africa. "
Like the illustrious Thomas, an ancestral network grows and encompbades more and more historical and ethnic groups, as it turns in time.
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