Can DNA Reveal Your Roots?

By Anita Hamilton

Growing up in Appalachia in the 1950s, Brent Kennedy always believed that he was of English and Scotch-Irish descent, just like everyone he knew in his hometown of Wise, Va. But when he saw the film Lawrence of Arabia in 1962, he noticed that his family looked more like the Arabs in the movie than the British. Kennedy had inherited his father's light blue eyes, but he had his mother's black hair and in the summer would get a deep tan. He had heard a story about his great-grandfather being barred from voting in the early 1900s because his skin was too dark. "I thought, What's wrong with us? Why do we look funny?" When he asked his mother, "I was told to shut up. I really didn't know who I was," he says.

Last December he finally got some answers. After taking a $199 DNA test offered by DNAPrint Genomics in Sarasota, Fla., Kennedy was told he was 45% Northern and Western European, 25% Middle Eastern, 25% Turkish-Greek and 5% South Asian. "I felt freed," he says. "Suddenly there was an explanation for a lot of the shame and embarrassment in the family." As an adult, Kennedy had learned that his mother's family belonged to a mixed-race group called Melungeons who lived in the Appalachians. While their exact ethnic origins are unclear, Melungeons were united by their dark complexion and the discrimination they faced from lighter-skinned neighbors. Kennedy became so interested in his heritage that he wrote a 1994 book called The Melungeons. But it wasn't until he took the DNA test, he says, that he felt he had unlocked the mystery of his ancestry.

More than 100,000 Americans, including such celebrities as Oprah and Spike Lee, have sought to do the same by taking genealogical DNA tests now offered by commercial labs. Starting at $95 and using a sample of cells swabbed from inside the cheek, the tests can answer questions ranging from whether you have Native American or African ancestry to whether you are related to someone with the same last name. One of the newest services, launched by the National Geographic Society in April, provides a glimpse of your ancestors' migratory history and helps fund a five-year research project aimed at mapping the migratory path of modern humans.

While the test results can pack an emotional wallop that brings many to tears--especially adoptees, descendants of slaves and others who previously had little knowledge of their roots--skeptics have raised questions about their accuracy. "When genetics becomes a direct-to-consumer product, it gets oversimplified and oversold," says Hank Greely, an ethicist and lawyer at Stanford Law School who specializes in genetics and biotechnology. Although it is relatively easy to determine African or Asian ancestry, it's more difficult to pinpoint roots in, say, the Ivory Coast or Sri Lanka. Accuracy will improve as genealogical databases acquire more samples, but many in this nation of immigrants and ethnic hybrids are happy to have even approximate answers to that universal question, Who am I?

Underlying the DNA tests is the idea, accepted by most scientists, that modern humans evolved in Africa some 100,000 years ago and then spread out across the globe, picking up genetic mutations along the way. Researchers have been trying to determine when and where various mutations occurred. Genetic genealogists track these mutations and compare them with a database of DNA markers culled from thousands of people with deep roots in specific regions of the world, such as the Aborigines in Australia or the Basques in Spain. If an individual's mutations match those of an indigenous group, a link may be established.

For some, DNA tests help confirm an ancestry that was suspected but never proved. William Sanchez, a Catholic priest in Albuquerque, N.M., always knew that he had a Spanish heritage but says he also felt a spiritual connection "to Israel and the chosen people." Although he was raised Catholic, his mother followed many Jewish traditions, such as covering mirrors in the house when someone died. But it wasn't until Sanchez took a test from Family Tree DNA in Houston that he learned he had inherited genetic markers for the Cohanim, Jewish high priests said to be descended from Moses' brother Aaron.

First identified by Michael Hammer at the University of Arizona, markers for the Cohanim show up in more than 80% of people who report that lineage but in less than 1% of the rest of the population. After getting his results, Sanchez learned from relatives that he descended from "converso-Jews," who pretended to convert to Catholicism during the Spanish Inquisition in order to avoid persecution. On learning of his Jewish origins, Sanchez says, "I felt happy, because it proved an ancient ancestry."

Genetic testing has a special attraction for African Americans because most have no other way to trace their lineage; the slave trade did a thorough job of severing their African roots. Washington-based African Ancestry aims to re-establish these links by telling its customers whether their DNA matches that of any of hundreds of ethnic groups in Africa, from the Hausa in northern Nigeria to the Ashantis in Ghana. For Juanita Thompson, a real estate agent in Arlington, Va., the test had special significance because her mother had been adopted as an infant and her birth family was unknown. "There was always a void," says Thompson, 61. "Having this DNA test gave me a connection to my mother's side of the family. I feel good about finding another piece to the puzzle of who I am."

As satisfying as it was for Thompson to be told that her mother's family descended from the Yorubas in Ghana, it is exactly this kind of precision that has critics fuming. "I think it is a disgraceful thing to try to tell an African American that you can match them to any group in Africa now," says Bruce Jackson, a geneticist at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell and co-director of the African-American DNA Roots Project, a nonprofit research group that is digging into the genetic history of American blacks. Jackson says making such classifications is premature because not enough people have been tested to establish distinct markers for each group. "Every ethnic group in Africa is a mix that we don't understand yet," says Jackson.

Rick Kittles, African Ancestry's scientific director, defends his company's work, saying he compares customers' DNA with a database of more than 20,000 DNA samples from nearly 400 indigenous African groups. The company reports a match, he notes, only if the statistical probability is 90% or higher. "I'm doing the same thing everyone else is doing, but I am doing it on people of African descent, and I get criticized," says Kittles, who adds that some 3,000 people have taken his $349 test.

One of the less controversial aspects of genetic genealogy is its ability to help people fill in gaps in their family tree. Leo Little, a retired engineer in Austin, Texas, had used historical records to trace his lineage back to his great-great-grandfather Thomas Little, who was born in Alabama in 1816. Then, he says, "I hit a brick wall. I knew my Littles were from the South, but there were a lot of Littles from the South, and it was impossible to sort out." After he took a DNA test from Family Tree DNA, he began leading one of the company's 1,900 surname projects, in this case checking test results on Littles. As a result, he has identified three distant cousins. By pooling their family records, the cousins have been able to trace their roots all the way back to 1680.

While members of the Little family were happy to share genetic information, some people worry about unauthorized sharing. DNA-test companies say they will keep results confidential, but at least one, DNAPrint, requires customers to sign a consent form acknowledging that results "may be subpoenaed by court order." Another complaint is that some of the most common tests reveal only a sliver of ancestry. The Y-chromosome test, for example, traces only the patrilineal line (your father's father's father and so on, but not your father's mother). Similarly, the mitochondrial-DNA test, which looks at DNA passed from the mother's egg to both her male and female children, illuminates only your mother's female ancestry. "If you go back 300 years, you have more than 1,000 ancestors. They are telling you about 1 in 1,000 of your ancestors. I think they should make that clear," says Stanford ethicist Greely.

Those flaws haven't deterred amateur genealogists like Charles Kerchner of Emmaus, Pa. The retired electrical engineer says he has spent about $3,000 testing himself and nine distant cousins in order to confirm relations that historical records had already indicated. Was it worth it? "Absolutely. It is like a high-tech Bible entry," says Kerchner, referring to the tradition of recording names and birth dates in family Bibles. Using historical records, he has been able to trace his roots back to Switzerland and Germany in the early 1500s. But Kerchner, 60, says he will not rest until he finds a German ancestral village where he can sit down someday and have a beer--hopefully with a local member of his clan. Having exhausted the paper trail, he says, "my only hope left is DNA testing."