Gina Page, president of African Ancestry in Washington, D.C., said her company specializes in doing DNA analyses (both mtDNA and Y chromosome) and comparing the results to their African Lineage Database.
The mtDNA analysis is much more popular with her clients, Paige said. She hypothesizes two reasons for this: "Women can't do Y chromosome, and African Americans have a greater chance of the mitrochondrial DNA tracing back to Africa than the Y chromosome," Page said.
About 30 percent of her company's clients who chose the Y chromosome analysis find they have European ancestry on the male side, she said. While the actual lab work is contracted out, Paige said the analyses of the data are done on-site by geneticist Rick Kittles.
"We do it (interpretation) internally. The African lineage database is our main resource. We have over 10,000 DNA sequences from Africans -- over 82 lines," Paige said. "The bulk are from west and central Africans."
While many of her clients are black, Paige said, there is "a fair number" who are white. "We can search the European database as well," she said.
It's especially popular with black families with children, Paige said. Sometimes those children want to participate in the family tree projects that teachers conduct in schools, but they hit a dead end in records.
"It's very enlightening for kids," Paige said. "A lot of these little kids can trace their ancestry back to Ireland or England, but when these (black) children learn they are descended from a particular tribe in Africa, their faces just light up," she said.
| Greg Langley, books editors for the Advocate, writes on "Genealogy and Genomes: DNA technology helping people learn more about who they are and where they come from"
posted in articles on July 20, 2003 7:40 PM | t (0)
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