The New Frontier in Genetic Genealogy: Autosomal DNA Testing

After the male-inherited Y chromosome (Ycs) and the maternal mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), autosomal DNA testing offers many insights into a person's past and how he/she might be related to other people. While Ycs and mtDNA are limited to the two outermost lineages in the pedigree chart, autosomal DNA offers a genetic painting of all our ancestors. In recent years, four major laboratories have begun to offer autosomal DNA testing with the purpose of reconstructing information about our ethnicity, our genetic cousins, the geography and migrations of our ancestors, traits and medical predispositions we might have inherited from them, and even how much Neanderthal DNA we might have in our genes. It is an exciting time for genealogists as the new cutting-edge technology in DNA testing for family history is both affordable and accurate, revealing information about our past that just few years ago was deemed impossible. In this lecture, Ugo Perego will explain the major autosomal DNA tests available to genealogists, how they work and what to expect from them in order to reconstruct our genetic family history.