Monthly Archives: March 2022

DNA test kits have become more broadly available and affordable in recent years. What was once an intensive scientific process can now be delivered straight to your door -- for less than $100 in some cases.

Although these tests were first used as paternity tests or to solve crimes, the tests can now help you discover your heritage, any health risks you might have down the line, and even relatives you may not know about.

We've rounded up the best DNA test kit options available, no matter if you're looking to build out your family tree or get a snapshot of your health.

23andMe's test kits can help you discover how the sequences in your DNA might impact the future of your health. The Health and Ancestry kit looks at how your DNA might affect your chances of certain health conditions, including diabetes, atrial fibrillation, high blood pressure, migraine, Alzheimer's disease, and more.

The kit can also look at your lifestyle factors to determine the future of your health with things like lactose intolerance, muscle composition, caffeine consumption, and alcohol flush reaction. In addition, the company was the first DNA test kit approved by the Federal Drug Administration as a screener for potential diseases.

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Ancestry.com is known for helping people find out where they came from, but it also offers a complete DNA test kit that can aid in your family's historical research. This DNA test kit includes information about your geographic origins across more than 1,500 regions.

Suppose you're looking into your family's history and hit a roadblock. In that case, your DNA results may give you a clue where else you can look further to find more information, making AncestryDNA an excellent option for those digging deep into their family's history and origin. While the company does offer health testing, it is not as robust as competitors but will do the basic job.

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While AncestryDNA is great if you've already delved into the world of your family research, FamilyTreeDNA is a better place to start if you're just building out your family tree. Some features of this test include providing you with a percentage breakdown of your origin, such as ancient European groups, and the ability to connect with relatives from within the last five generations.

Another great feature about FamilyTreeDNA is that it offers paternal and maternal ancestry kits if you have gaps in either of those areas that you want to finally discover. Aside from family matters, FamilyTreeDNA looks at your health insights like fitness, nutrition, bone and heart health, and sleep routine, giving you access to meal and workout plans based on your DNA.

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Those who are hesitant about purchasing a DNA test kit due to privacy should consider Living DNA. The company has an extensive privacy statement that goes in-depth about what personal information it holds, why it saves it, what it does with it, and how it protects it. Because Living DNA is based in the UK, it is subject to the strict policies and regulations of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), making its privacy by far the best on this list.

As far as what Living DNA's test kits will tell you, it gives you 21 subregional DNA breakdowns from over 150 worldwide regions to precisely tell your heritage. The company also offers DNA health insights, such as how your body responds to vitamins, food, and exercise, all based on your genetic makeup.

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The most comprehensive DNA testing kit on this list is the Nebula Genomics Whole Genome Sequencing DNA test. This test kit uses sequencing technology to decode 100% of your DNA, compared to others that interpret only the most essential parts of your DNA, thus providing you with more specified information that only experts or knowledgeable customers might be seeking.

The company says it decodes more than 20,000 genes in the human genome, which can help spot very rare genetic variants that might cause genetic diseases. In addition, Nebula Genomics identifies mutations in your genes and allows you to find out more about your oral microbiome, which is a crucial indicator of disease and maintains the balance of your overall health.

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We looked at the most well-known DNA test kit companies for this list. We read through each company's privacy policies to ensure basic privacy protections of your DNA if you so choose to use one of these brands.

We also considered low- to mid-tier pricing to compare each kit, rather than looking at the most expensive options, since many of these brands offer kits at various price points.

DNA tests are relatively simple and all work the same way. After choosing which brand you want to use, the company mails you a saliva collection kit. You simply spit into a tube and mail it back to their lab. After several weeks, you receive your results and learn about your health or family treein detail.

Most DNA tests (including 23andMe) use genotyping to look at specific locations in your DNA and identify the variations that make you unique. Focusing on any specific variation can lead to clues about your ancestry, health conditions, and other traits.

Other tests, such as AncestryDNA, use autosomal DNA testing, which measures your autosomal chromosomes and matches them across a database of people who share DNA with you to find relatives.

DNA tests can provide you with a variety of information. For example, most kits on the market can break down your lineage and tell you a percentage of your heritage (i.e., 25% German heritage or 40% Irish heritage). In addition, DNA tests can cross-reference your DNA with others in a company's database so you can even find long-lost relatives.

Aside from domestic purposes, DNA tests can give insight into your health and if you are predisposed to certain diseases or conditions. Especially if you are looking to proactively take charge of your health, taking a DNA test kit could be worth it.

Many people might be hesitant to order a DNA test kit because of reports about compromised security and privacy. If you are concerned about your privacy, be sure to read through the DNA test company's privacy policies. In addition, it's important to note that companies do not share your DNA info with third parties (such as public databases or an employer) but may provide information to law enforcement if required by a valid court order or search warrant.

However, according to an investigation from Consumer Reports, these direct-to-consumer DNA testing companies unnecessarily compromise consumers' privacy regarding your non-DNA data like facts about your address, name, email, etc. As a result, CR recommends opting out of DNA research from your testing service or considering deleting your data once you are done using it.

Here are a few other DNA test options to look into:

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Best DNA test 2022: Top kits for ancestry and health - ZDNet

If there were a competition for the most godforsaken, remote place on Earth, Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean northeast of Siberia would be a worthy contender.

The ground is covered by permafrost and cyclones ravage the landscape on a regular basis. Even on the warmest days temperatures only climb as high as 5 degrees Celsius (41 degrees Fahrenheit), while in the wintertime it plummets to minus 30.

Prof. Love Daln, of the Centre for Palaeogenetics at the Swedish Museum of Natural History and Stockholm University, never thought his academic path would lead him here, of all places. But he kept returning to Wrangel, along with his fellow lab workers. They slept in tents, chased off curious polar bears, and tried to locate a unique find: the remains of the last woolly mammoths to walk the planet.

Throughout history, the location and harsh living conditions on Wrangel have kept humans away, thus creating the conditions that allowed the island to host the last surviving group of mammoths, until 2000 B.C.E. long after the Egyptians began building their pyramids.

It took a long time to collect the samples in conditions of intense cold, with a lot of polar bears around you not easy, the researcher recalls in a Zoom interview with Haaretz.

Daln is among the worlds foremost researchers of ancient DNA, using cutting-edge technology that enables a direct genetic study of evolution on Earth sequencing the genomes of animals and plants that became extinct hundreds of thousands, even millions, of years ago. In December, Nature magazine named him one of its scientists to watch in 2022.

DNA analysis is very important to the understanding of life, says Daln, and ancient DNA allows us to travel back in time. This way, we can learn about evolution at the molecular level in real time. Thats why its so cool. Until recent years, genetic studies always deduced about the past through current DNA, so we could only guess. With ancient DNA, we can really see what happened back then.

Indeed, analysis of ancient DNA heralded a real revolution in the study of the development of life and a series of dizzying discoveries. Thus, for example, we learned that Neanderthals mated with modern humans (Homo sapiens).

All humans currently living outside of Africa carry about 2 percent of Neanderthal DNA in their genetic makeup, and this is something we had no idea about before the study of ancient DNA, Daln says. Before this technology was developed, the argument was that there was no interspecies mating. Those 2 percent, by the way, affect COVID immunity, so its something that impacts us to this day.

Daln adds that ancient DNA studies have discovered that hybridization between species was a very common phenomenon, and not just among hominids. It was revealed, for instance, that modern brown bears carry 3 to 4 percent of the cave bears DNA an extremely large species of bear that lived in Europe and Western Asia, including Israel, but became extinct some 25,000 years ago.

So there was mating there, too, says Daln, and from this we understand that hybridization between species is a natural occurrence, which has happened in the past and may happen in the future.

Today, for example, people are worried that brown bears are reaching further northward due to global warming, and are mating with polar bears, he says. But this is something that has happened again and again over the past 700,000 years, so perhaps we dont need to be so worried about it.

A giant leap backward

The origins of this field of study can be dated back to 2005, when Next Generation Sequencing was developed. This method enables the separation of ancient DNA and contemporary DNA, which would contaminate the ancient findings.

This was a serious scientific breakthrough, Daln says. Until this method was developed, you couldnt ascertain if DNA found in an ancient bone, for example, belonged to the animal itself or to the researcher who found the bone.

If an archaeologist touches an ancient bone, he contaminates it, Daln explains. Its enough to breathe near a bone to contaminate it, because the breath contains many DNA molecules. In a previous study, we showed that this contamination penetrates deep into the bone. We took dog bones, 3,000 to 5,000 years old, sent them for DNA analysis, and found more human DNA than canine even deep in the bone.

The great advantage of Next Generation Sequencing is that it can identify damage to the DNA molecules. This damaged DNA by which we mean old DNA can be separated from the undamaged, or new, DNA. Furthermore, the method allows for the analysis of large quantities of data.

We went from a few hundred bytes of data to billions of bytes that we produce, Daln says. It allows us to reach much stronger conclusions regarding the past.

The research approach pioneered by Daln is called Deep Time Paleogenomics. There have been thousands of studies published about ancient DNA in the past decade, he says, and 99.9 percent of them focus on the past 10,000 years, and on the human genome. There are a few studies on the period from 10,000 to 50,000 years ago, and there are a handful fewer than 10 that go even further back in time.

Daln and his team were the first to successfully study ancient DNA over a million years old. Early last year, they published a pioneering research study that identified a hitherto unknown species: the steppe mammoth. They discovered that this mammoth lived until at least 1.2 million years ago. Our research showed that it is possible to go back at least 1.2 million years that is a huge leap back in time, Daln says.

He relays how, for more than a decade, he held onto the samples in his possession, waiting patiently for the right technology to emerge.

The moment that the information exists, you also need very advanced analysis methods to analyze it, Daln says. We analyzed 10 billion bits of DNA, and 99 percent of them were of bacteria from the soil or from plants, he recalls. In other words, very few came from the mammoths and even these bits were very short.

In order to identify the bits of DNA that belonged to mammoths, the research team needed to develop unique statistical models, which are at the heart of their research. Impressive accomplishment notwithstanding, Daln believes it is possible to go even further back in time. We view it in terms of the degree of preservation of the DNA in mammoths, he says. The analysis would also work if the findings were another half a million years older.

Meanwhile, Daln and his team recently received funding for a large-scale project in which they will seek the DNA of additional species such as moose and lemmings. The remains of some of them are 2.6 million years old, and Im fairly certain we would succeed in extracting DNA from them, he states.

Mosquitoes and bears

Analysis of the distant past would allow us to explore several significant biological issues, including the selection process of animals undergoing evolution. The selection of most of the mammals occurred at least half a million years ago, Daln says. In order to understand this process, you need samples that are at least half a million years old at which point it would be possible to answer basic questions such as, for instance, whether the rate of adaptation in evolution takes place faster when the species has only recently been created. Thats something we dont know. By the way, for the mammoths we investigated, the answer is no, but that is a sampling of a single species. It may be that the rate of adaptation in other species was actually quicker at the start of the species existence.

In order to decipher such riddles, researchers must spend long hours in the laboratory. But there are also intermissions spent in the field such as the trips to Siberia which can last up to six weeks.

It happens with greater frequency than I would like its cold there, Daln smiles. In the summer, the temperature varies between 0 and 5 degrees Celsius. And when the temperature rises just a bit, there are quantities of mosquitoes you wouldnt believe. Its terrible. There are whole swarms all around you, almost making it hard to see. Its a whole cloud around you. Also, youre living with constant noise, 24 hours a day, with that buzzing sound.

Nevertheless, the tough field conditions are critical for carrying out the research: in order to piece together ancient DNA samples, they must be well preserved throughout the entire period of time since they were created. In this case, they must remain frozen for over a million years. Such samples can be found in the Siberian permafrost, in Antarctica, in caves at high altitudes and perhaps also in the depths of the ocean. For the most part, the findings consist of bones and teeth.

Daln relates that many of the mammoth remains in his research are a by-product of the unlawful activity of ivory traders in Siberia. These traders conduct extensive digging in the permafrost in order to locate the valuable tusks, which they then sell in the Chinese market. The length of some of the tunnels dug by the ivory traders run for hundreds of meters and at times the researchers attempt to locate findings in them.

They are interested solely in tusks, not bones, so sometimes we go in after them to see what is left, Daln says. But old tunnels can collapse, and one time that happened to us. Part of the team nearly lost their lives.

Scary as that sounds, it wasnt the researchers most hair-raising experience. The most frightening part is flying in the Russian helicopters theyre very old, Daln admits. Russian engineers are skilled at building aircraft that last for many years and the pilots are very skilled, but nevertheless there are quite a few helicopter crashes. And thats how we get around there.

At times, the researchers also receive samples from collections held in Russian museums. These have already been at room temperature for decades, Daln says. When we dig, we keep the findings frozen in the laboratory.

When they come across any mammoth remains, such as a tooth or a tusk, they take a small bit about the size of a sugar cube as a sample and preserve it in cold storage. They send the rest to museum collections.

However, the ancient DNA research does not focus solely on bones and teeth: scientists are also collecting DNA samples from sediment. In this method, they drill into the stone walls of a cave or into the permafrost, analyzing the DNA found in the sediment. This way, they can acquire data not only on individual specimens, such as in genomic analysis of a bone or tooth, but instead on an entire community.

You take a bit of soil or rock and see what lived there hundreds of thousands of years ago DNA of all the plant life that lived at that time, and of animals that lived there, Daln explains.

Some 20 percent of these sediment samples are composed of organic material originating in animas dead skin, urine and feces. This includes short bits of DNA, which it is possible to piece together. The researchers determine the age of the sample based on bits of plants they find in the sediment, which can be dated. Daln believes that in the near future, it will be possible to use such sediments to discover what happened to entire populations over a million years ago.

The possibilities are mind-boggling. In the past 2.5 million years, Planet Earth has mainly had ice ages of approximately 100,000 years in length, and between them hot periods of about 10,000 years, he explains. Were now in a hot period, and one interesting question is how the ecological systems looked the last time there was a hot period about 120,000 years ago. Thats something that is very interesting to examine. The mammoths became extinct during the current hot period [the Holocene], and other Arctic species are facing a difficult situation. It would be interesting to know what happened last time.

As opposed to the sediment samples, when it comes to gauging the ages of bones and teeth from the past 50,000 years, the researchers use the most common dating system: carbon-14. However, this tool is unsuitable for earlier times. As an alternative, the researchers examine the age of rodents found in the same soil level. Lemmings, for example. The morphology of these animals changes relatively quicker than that of mammoths. Bits of DNA from the rodents skull are examined and their age determined the assumption being that the mammoth found alongside it is of the same vintage.

A third method is paleomagnetic dating, which uses the effect of Earths magnetic field reversal to determine the age of sediments or archaeological findings. The last time the Earths magnetic direction reversed completely was 800,000 years ago, says Daln, and so its possible to know whats earlier than that date. It is impossible to know the exact age, but you can know if something is older than 800,000 years.

DNA, politics and racism

Even though innovative research techniques expand scientific understanding, there are some who have made problematic use of them. For instance, two years ago, then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu referred to an ancient DNA study which stated that the Philistines may have been of European descent.

In order to avoid political and racist use of the research tool, scholars from 31 countries recently drafted an ethical code for the use of ancient DNA studies.

It is very important to take into account that findings and most certainly those of studies of ancient human DNA can have political implications, Daln says. When you take samples in countries in which there is, for instance, indigenous populations, it can influence the decisions of politicians.

Therefore, he adds, it is important that the research take place in collaboration with, and with the consent of, native populations.

Another ethical issue Daln raises relates the harm to the findings, some of which are extremely rare, that the research causes. Samples of ancient humans are extremely rare and when you investigate the DNA, you harm the sample, he explains. The question can be asked: Do you want results now, or is it better to preserve the findings for generations to come, which may have access to better technology?

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In Russia, an ancient DNA researcher rewrites the past - Haaretz

When Tina Ennis took an Ancestry.com DNA test in 2019, she hoped to track down her estranged grandfather. Instead, Ennis learned that she was switched at birth with a woman named Jill Lopez.

Ennis and Lopez, both 57, were born on the same day in 1964, and grew up about two hours away from one another in Oklahoma. They were total strangers until two years ago when at the age of 55 they discovered they each went home from the hospital with the others biological parents.

Now Ennis and Lopez are opening up in a joint interview with NBC NEWSs Kate Snow about the revelation that turned their lives upside down.

"Its a hard... Its a hard thing to get around, Lopez told Snow on Tuesday.

"I mean it was just like, all I could think about was how I was going to tell my mom," an emotional Ennis shared. "I just thought she's not going to be able to handle it. That's what I thought about."

Kathryn Jones, the woman who raised Ennis but gave birth to Lopez, told Snow that she was "totally devastated" when she learned what happened. Jones said it was as if "somebody took a hatchet" to her heart.

"She was afraid she was going to lose me," Ennis explained. "And she wasn't going to. I wasn't going to leave her."

Ennis' biological parents passed away before she had a chance to meet them, but Lopez has been getting to know Jones. The women both love the color purple, shopping, and estate sales. They also share the same blue eyes. Lopez described her relationship with Jones as friends.

"And it's a very good start," Jones noted. But no matter what, Ennis will always be her little girl.

"I could not lose Tina. She'll always be my daughter," Jones said. "I have loved her from the second they laid her in my arms."

Jill Lopez is Kathryn Jones's biological daughter.

In an earlier interview with NBC's Snow, Lopez said she never suspected she wasn't biologically related to her family. But Ennis had some questions.

"I looked at a picture one day, and it was my two sisters and my mom and me and I couldn't find anything on any of those faces that looked like me," she recalled. "There was like no resemblance."

All three women want to hold the hospital responsible. Represented by Smith Barkett Law Group, they have filed suit against the current regional hospital, Duncan Regional Hospital, who they argue merged long ago with the hospital where they were born.

Cyndi Crook, Community Relations Director at Duncan Regional Hospital, issued the following statement:

"It is the practice of Duncan Regional Hospital to not comment publicly on pending litigation. However, in this particular matter, please note that Duncan Regional Hospital is a not-for-profit corporation that did not come into existence until 1976."

The statement adds that Duncan Regional Hospital is "not the legal successor" to the hospital that Lopez and Ellis say switched them at birth.

Since both delivering doctors and the nurses involved in 1964 have passed away, no one really knows how the babies may have been switched.

The families are continuing to process their grief, regret and anger.

"It's a hard thing to know what to do, you know, because there's no books to buy [to] get you through it," Lopez said.

"There's so many people involved," Ennis added. "It's not just me and Jill. It's two entire families."

This story first appearedon TODAY.com. More from TODAY:

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After DNA Test, 2 Women Discover They Were Switched at Birth Nearly 60 Years Ago - NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth

AUSTIN, Texas One of the grand challenges with using CRISPR-based gene editing on humans is that the molecular machinery sometimes makes changes to the wrong section of a hosts genome, creating the possibility that an attempt to repair a genetic mutation in one spot in the genome could accidentally create a dangerous new mutation in another.

But now, scientists at The University of Texas at Austin have redesigned a key component of a widely used CRISPR-based gene-editing tool, called Cas9, to be thousands of times less likely to target the wrong stretch of DNA while remaining just as efficient as the original version, making it potentially much safer. The work is described in a paper published today in the journal Nature.

This really could be a game changer in terms of a wider application of the CRISPR Cas systems in gene editing, said Kenneth Johnson, a professor of molecular biosciences and co-senior author of the study with David Taylor, an assistant professor of molecular biosciences. The papers co-first authors are postdoctoral fellows Jack Bravo and Mu-Sen Liu.

Other labs have redesigned Cas9 to reduce off-target interactions, but so far, all these versions improve accuracy by sacrificing speed. SuperFi-Cas9, as this new version has been dubbed, is 4,000 times less likely to cut off-target sites but just as fast as naturally occurring Cas9. Bravo says you can think of the different lab-generated versions of Cas9 as different models of self-driving cars. Most models are really safe, but they have a top speed of 10 miles per hour.

Theyre safer than the naturally occurring Cas9, but it comes at a big cost: Theyre going extremely slowly, said Bravo. SuperFi-Cas9 is like a self-driving car that has been engineered to be extremely safe, but it can still go at full speed.

So far, the researchers have demonstrated the use of SuperFi-Cas9 on DNA in test tubes. Theyre now collaborating with other researchers who plan to test SuperFi-Cas9 for gene editing in living cells. Theyre also working to develop still safer and more active versions of Cas9.

CRISPR-based gene-editing tools are adapted from naturally occurring systems in bacteria. In nature, a Cas9 protein floats around in the environment, searching for DNA with a very specific sequence of 20 letters, like the X on a pirate map that indicates dig here. Sometimes, when most of the letters are correct, except those in spots 18 through 20, Cas9 still goes ahead and digs in. This is called a mismatch, and it can have disastrous consequences in gene editing.

Taylor and Johnson developed a technique called kinetics-guided structure determination that used a cryo-electron microscope in the Sauer Structural Biology Lab to take snapshots of Cas9 in action as it interacted with this mismatched DNA.

They were surprised to discover that when Cas9 encounters this type of mismatch in positions 18 through 20, instead of giving up and moving on, it has a finger-like structure that swoops in and holds on to the DNA, making it act as if it were the correct sequence. Normally, a mismatch leaves the DNA a bit floppy; this finger-like structure stabilizes it.

Its like if you had a chair and one of the legs was snapped off and you just duct taped it together again, Bravo said. It could still function as a chair, but it might be a bit wobbly. Its a pretty dirty fix.

Without that added stability in the DNA, Cas9 doesnt take the other steps needed to cut the DNA and make edits. No one had ever observed this extra finger doing this stabilization before.

This was something that I could never have, in a million years, imagined in my mind would have happened, Taylor said.

Based on this insight, they redesigned the extra finger on Cas9 so that instead of stabilizing the part of the DNA containing the mismatch, the finger is instead pushed away from the DNA, which prevents Cas9 from continuing the process of cutting and editing the DNA. The result is SuperFi-Cas9, a protein that cuts the right target just as readily as naturally occurring Cas9, but is much less likely to cut the wrong target.

Other authors are Grace Hibshman, Tyler Dangerfield, Kyungseok Jung and Ryan McCool, also of The University of Texas at Austin.

Bravo, Liu, Hibshman, Dangerfield, Johnson and Taylor are inventors on a patent application covering novel Cas9 designs based on this work. The UT Austin Office of Technology Commercialization is managing the intellectual property and working to find industry partners that can help realize the vast potential of the technology.

This work was supported in part by The Welch Foundation and the Robert J. Kleberg, Jr. and Helen C. Kleberg Foundation. Taylor is a CPRIT scholar supported by the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. Taylor is also supported by the David Taylor Excellence Fund in Structural Biology, made possible with support from Judy and Henry Sauer.

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Gene Editing Gets Safer Thanks to Redesigned Protein - UT News - University of Texas

DNA research has painted a new picture of how ancient humans moved across Africa, according to a new study from dozens of scientists, including researchers from Stony Brook University.

Elizabeth Sawchuk is an anthropology professor at Stony Brook and a fellow at the University of Alberta. She and her team looked at the DNA of ancient foragers in Africa hunters and gatherers from more than 10,000 years ago.

Things like the spread of herding and farming really transformed African landscapes, Sawchuk said, as well as the rise of cities and city-states, trade and even slavery and colonialism.

Researchers took DNA from ancient bodies they found all across sub-Saharan Africa. Sawchuk found one of the bodies herself. What they found revealed answers about a longstanding mystery in African archaeology the transition to the later stone age, when people started making art and using new types of tools.

And wed never really been able to answer why this happened, Sawchuk said. We know that our species had already been around for over 200,000 years, so its not like a new species was on the scene.

The DNA points to a big change in Africa around the time beads, pigments and symbolic art became more widespread. It suggests complicated webs of people moving around central and southern Africa.

Establishing these trade and exchange networks, finding people and having children with them far away from where they were born, Sawchuk said. Creating this complex population structure. Its really making us understand how people organized themselves completely differently in order to deal with whatever challenges they were facing.

Sawchuk said as scientists study DNA from older and older people, it could answer even more ancient questions from humanitys deeper past including the most remote origins of humanity.

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Long Island scientists uncover secrets of early civilization from ancient African DNA - WSHU