Genetic testing may not be the best way to study one's ancestry

Darkfrog submitted, created time 1 week 1 day (www.nature.com)

In recent years, companies providing personal genetic exams have sprung up like mushrooms. For a fee and a cheek swab, they can will identify the client's countries of ancestry, even to specific regions.

However, Charmaine Royal of the the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences has serious reservations:

"The general limitation, I'd say, of all of these tests, is that they can't pinpoint with 100% accuracy who your ancestors may or may not be. Some people are concerned that the biogeographical ancestry test reifies the notion of race

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23andMe Slashes Price on Personal Genetics Test

jerry submitted, created time 2 months 1 week (www.abcnews.go.com)

A company announced that analyzes customers' genetic makeup to predict health risks and provide ancestry information has slashed the price on its personal DNA test.

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After DNA Diagnosis: ‘Hello, 16p11.2. Are You Just Like Me?’

Eric wu submitted, created time 10 months 3 weeks (www.blueridgenow.com)

This may be a interesting topic.It was published on nytimes firstly,but the link may have some problems.Here is the new link:
http://www.blueridgenow.com/article/20071228/ZNYT04/712280348/1170/NEWS/ZNYT04/Searching_for_Similar_Diagnosis_Through_DNA

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DNA Pioneer’s Genome Blurs Race Lines

jane2007 submitted, created time 11 months 1 week (www.nytimes.com)

James D. Watson, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA and winner of the Nobel prize, raised a storm recently when a British newspaper quoted him saying that black Africans are not as intelligent as whites. But his own brilliant DNA seems to blur the lines.

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DNA Tests Find Branches but Few Roots

jane2007 submitted, created time 11 months 4 weeks (www.nytimes.com)

HENRY LOUIS GATES JR., whose PBS special “African American Lives” explores the ancestry of famous African-Americans using DNA testing, recently has become one of the industry’s critics.The nest story is the reason: Mr. Gates says his concerns date back to 2000, when a company told him his maternal ancestry could most likely be traced back to Egypt, probably to the Nubian ethnic group. Five years later, however, a test by a second company startled him. It concluded that his maternal ancestors were not Nubian or even African, but most likely Europea

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Computer program traces ancestry using anonymous DNA samples

zibba submitted, created time 1 year 2 months (www.eurekalert.org)

A group of computer scientists, mathematicians, and biologists from around the world have developed a computer algorithm that can help trace the genetic ancestry of thousands of individuals in minutes, without any prior knowledge of their background. The team's findings will be published in the September 2007 edition of the journal PLoS Genetics.

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