African DNA

Welcome to African DNA

"I was able to trace the family trees of several prominent African Americans deep into slavery, following the paper trail. And then when the paper trail ended, we tested their DNA in an attempt to discover the origins of their mother's line or their father's line on the African continent."

Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University Director,
W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research

Paternal Tests

Our Y/CS25 provides reliable markers for tight genealogical connections, plus guaranteed placement of your Y chromosome (Y/CS) on the 'tree' of mankind.

Because man originated in Africa, the genetic diversity in Africa is much greater than in Asia or Europe, which were first settled only 30,000 years ago.

Men pass their Y chromosome on to all of their sons from generation to generation. Historically speaking, all men descended from a single man who lived 60-70,000 years ago in Africa, and everyone in the world descends from that one man. However, as man evolved since our "Genetic Adam", small changes (aka mutations) have taken place which separate all males into 18 highly-defined branches, called Haplogroups.

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Maternal Tests

Female inheritable mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) passes from the mother to all of her children, and from her daughters to their children, and so on in an unending genetic chain.

Therefore you and your mother's sister's child have identical mtDNA. A human mitochondrial 'tree' built upon small changes over great periods of time (aka mutations) contains two dozen distinct branches. We test both: we sequence a region of the mtDNA that is 1116 base pairs long and in addition test you for 22 mutations that define the branches in the mitochondrial tree. The combination of these results provide geographical matches when compared against our African database.

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