Determine parentage and origin

Parentage is the term used to describe the range of relatives whose genetic make-up one carries. Certain genes are located at different sites in the genome and can therefore be subject to different hereditary traits. If there is a defective gene in the family history, it is possible to calculate the probability of the genetic defect being present in the following relatives.

From a non-medical point of view, a genetic test can be performed for genealogical research. However, it is important to know that the results are only based on probabilities and that certain gene expressions are assigned to a country or ethnicity where they occur most frequently. A genetic defect persists, especially in isolated, similar populations.

For this reason, genetic diseases are present with very different frequencies in different regions of the world. One example of this is the so-called “beta thalassemia“, a hemoglobin disorder that occurs mainly in the Mediterranean region. However, this principle is quite imprecise and has caused misinterpretations on several occasions in the past.

In addition, most databases contain rather European characteristics, so that rare characteristics usually cannot be correctly assigned. A further problem is that a person has more ancestors than gene sections and some genes may be lost in the inheritance process or simply not be passed on to the next generation. Although individual sequences can be filtered well in some cases, the exact assignment is almost impossible, because the mixing of different ethnic groups has always been too much to separate.

It is assumed that we all had the same ancestors 3000-4000 years ago, which makes it difficult to differentiate using a genetic test. In principle, such genetic analyses are rather critical.Over the millennia, mankind has spread over many different continents and has often mixed. Thus characteristics cannot be clearly assigned to any ethnic group.

Due to the great mixture of ethnic groups, however, genetic tests are often used as an argument against racism. Since with actually each humans influences from other countries and ethnic groups can be found, xenophobia is nonsensical, so the reason. Not only the ethnic affiliation to other people can be tried to decipher, but also a paternity.

If the samples of child and (alleged) parents are compared, the child should have shares of both parents. If this is not the case and the child has only parts of the mother and parts of an indefinable person, this usually speaks for a foreign paternity. If a child is genetically examined, the parents are often automatically examined as well. For this reason, genetic diagnosticians usually warn parents that the testing of a child’s diseases can reveal paternity.