Determining Family History Through Scientific DNA Testing

The goal of paternity and parental DNA testing is to figure out whether or not two people are related in the form of parent and child. There are two kinds of these parental DNA tests: a paternity test, which will prove genetically that some man is the father of a child, and a maternity test, which aims to determine the same information about a mother. When it comes to figuring out who the parents are in any situation, you'll find that the genetic DNA test is both the most commonly used and the most reliable test out there.

As already mentioned the use of DNA testing is the most accurate and technologically sound method of determining a person's parents. When a DNA test is conducted to determine whether or not some person is the parent of a child, the results of the test will either be 0% if the person is not the parent, or 99.99% if the person is the parent. It is hard to dispute these kinds of results.

The DNA information in any cell in a person's body will be the same as all the other DNA in their cells (except for reproductive cells, obviously). The reason that reproductive cells do not have the same DNA as other cells in the body is that the DNA in a reproductive cell will actually only contain half of the DNA information as other cells, since the other parent will contribute the other half. Because of the fact that this genetic material is found inside the nucleus of the cell, it is called a nuclear genome.

You may also find DNA testing used to determine ancestry, as a person's DNA sequence can be compared to another's to figure out which came from which. This test is done by directly comparing the way that one sequence of DNA relates to another to see if it was directly copied. This test can be very effective at figuring out a line of parentage, since a conclusive result of the test can prove whether someone is a parent or not. Each cell in the human body contains a mitochondrial genome, which is obviously contained within the mitochondria of the cell. There is no instance where mitochondrial DNA does not come from the mother.

In all cases, a DNA test on nuclear genome's will be more difficult than testing on the child's mitochondria. The Y chromosome between a father and son will be completely identical, so this can be an easy way to determine paternity for a male child. Though the science might seem hard, a DNA home test for families is actually quite straightforward.