Beginner’s guide: discover the science behind your dna test

I was going to start this month’s article by talking about why we love this hobby so much but I realised that this isn’t really a hobby at all. Genealogy/family tree research/ancestor hunting or whate

I spend a lot of time talking about DNA and I love sharing my experiences with it, but occasionally I wonder what really makes genetic genealogy work for me. Below I’ve distilled my thoughts into four

Earlier this year I looked at using mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) tests for genealogy, looking at how reader Lynne could make use of her matches from this test (the Full Mitochondrial Sequence (FMS) from

‘DNA isn’t a magic bullet,’ says DNA Detective Michelle Leonard. ‘Sometimes people think it’s going to be, and they think it’s going to “throw up the answers”.’ Occasionally this happens, ‘if you’re r

I’d grown up wondering why I looked so different from my family. But it took 35 years to discover the truth.

Picture this: you have followed that advice, spending countless hours building your family tree, squinting at faded census records and wrestling with handwriting that makes doctors’ prescriptions look