The company offering the service is called Ancestry.com and it is taking advantage of the latest developments, and increasing simplicity, of genetic testing.
With a small sample of saliva, Ancestry.com are offering to send users of the service a list of people they are related to, even going back to cousins that lived and died 200 hundred years ago. The consumer genetics company states this in a new advertising campaign, describing the apparent genealogical power of its new “AncestryDNA” test.
The service is the latest in a development from this and similar companies to have the general public genotyped and to become interested about their genetic heritage. Ancestry boasts more than 800,000 genotyped members in its database, and the company claims that a new DNA testing technology, which reads a person’s genetic code at “more than 700,000 DNA markers,” makes to possible to dig up relatives that lived centuries ago.
Discussing the development further, Ancestry CEO Tim Sullivan said in a statement: “Now, through a simple DNA test, AncestryDNA is fundamentally revolutionizing the way to discover your family history, transforming the experience by making it faster and easier to go further into your family’s past, and instantly discover new ancestors you never knew you had.”
There may not be a match in every case. However, as more and more people consent to have their genomic information stored in databases like Ancestry’s, however, the probability that such analyses can indicate real familial connections increases.
