• Question: how far back can people trace their genes?

    Asked by abdullahi to Alexis, Dr D, Jasmine, Mario on 25 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Alexis Barr

      Alexis Barr answered on 25 Jun 2013:

      This is a tricky one to answer. You can easily trace your family history back through records of births and deaths and censuses. But to trace your genes is tough. To compare your genes to those of your ancestors you would need some DNA or cells from those people. This is probably impossible to get unless you know where everyone is buried and are willing to dig bodies out of the ground!
      But you can be sure that you will have lots of very similar genes to your ancient family members because DNA is passed down from generation to generation. Genes are slightly different from every single person, but most of it will be the same.

    • Photo: Jasmine Penny

      Jasmine Penny answered on 25 Jun 2013:

      Great question! Alexis is right, you can look at records such as births and deaths to trace your ancestory and your DNA is passed down from generations to generations. However to trace your DNA and genes directly you would need samples from each generation. Although, did you know that there is a part of the cell called the mitochondria and this has its own DNA which is separate to that in the nucleus. This DNA is always inherited from your mother!

    • Photo: Andrew Devitt

      Andrew Devitt answered on 25 Jun 2013:

      Using genes for your family tree is pretty cool and has been used a lot to track where people came from in history. It can help to map how humans migrated over the years. Apparently, Malta residents are the modern day relatives of the Phoenicians (according to a quick web search).

      the Y chromosome is a great way of tracing back. I got my Y chromosome from my Dad, and he got it from his Dad and so on. THe Y chromosome can only come from your Dad so that’s a great step back in time!

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