Uncovering Dad’s Ethnicity Without Dad

So much buzz in the DNA world with DNA Day sales yesterday, and then 23andMe allowed Ancestry uploads, well only if you live in the USA but still it created some excitement.

This had me review the reports at 23andMe, years ago I had my brother take their DNA test, as I like to fish in all the pools. I recently tested my mother at that site as I wanted to take advantage of some of the utilities they provide when you add in a parent. My dad passed away in 2008 and I did get his DNA tested at Family Tree DNA but I cannot add his DNA to any site that doesn’t allow uploads.

A feature that people have been talking about at 23andMe is the Ethnicity tool which is quite good if you have a lot of mixture in your ancestry. Our family is mostly Irish and it is a broad category at 23andMe but there are some cool things you can see, even if you have only one parent tested.This view shows that my mother and my brother and would like me to connect my father, which I cannot do.

This next view shows my mother’s ethnicity on the right and what’s left over, so my dad! A very exciting thing for those that cannot test one parent.

*this is not a complete picture of Dad, it is the portion of DNA from dad that is passed to my brother.

Another interesting thing 23andMe does is break it down where on your Chromosome these pieces of ethnicity are showing up.

And if you click on say the French/German in the table on the right it will highlight that portion of the chart – 

So my brother’s itty-bitty French-German ancestry appears for him on Chromosome 12. If I have someone who matches him at that spot I could explore the fact that they may fall into our Stickle line.

This is a fun exercise that I can also take a step further by downloading the ethnicity report and adding it into DNA Painter.

And it has made me decide to take a 23andMe test to see my comparison with my mother and brother.

PS. 23andMe is having a sale on kits right now, buy two and get the third one free in time for Mother’s Day!