21 July 2022
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Your DNA is just part of the picture - to gain a fuller understanding of your ancestors' DNA and thus use it more effectively in your family history research - it's important to ask others to test too. But who?
You probably know that you share approximately half of your DNA with a full sibling. While it interesting that you share so much, this also means that they will have a further 50% of DNA from your parents that you did not inherit. Likewise you have 50% that they did not inherit.
The consequence of this means that if you don't have both your parents to test, then testing a sibling can provide you with clues as to your parents' DNA, and that of their ancestors, which you may miss if you rely solely on the DNA that has been passed down to you.
Spending a little time thinking about who best to request to test is a good idea. i.e create yourself a target testing wish list.
To do this, draw up a list of those members of your family who you would find most useful to test. For instance these may be relatives on a particular branch of your family tree on which you have a mystery that you would especially like to solve. It is important to think about testing relatives who are a generation older than you are - as such they are one generation closer to your ancestors.
With DNA it is usually a question of piecing together snippets of information. By asking more relatives to test, and asking them to allow access to their DNA test results, then you will have more snippets of information to work with.
