(The Basic Service)
We will send you a clinically sterile home saliva test, similar to a cotton bud, with which you will gently brush the inside of your cheek. This will give us enough mtDNA to analyse.
After you send the sample back to us, we will analyse it in our laboratories. There, scientists will carefully filter other particles from the brush (ions, bacteria etc) in order to obtain a few molecules of your mtDNA. These molecules are then 'amplified', or multiplied prior to analysis.
The DNA analysis itself is performed by machine, and provides your mtDNA sequence.
The resulting sequence will be aligned to the Anderson reference sequence (the first ever published complete mtDNA sequence) and checked by hand to ensure the accuracy of the automatic process.
We will send you your individual DNA sequence displayed as differences to the Anderson reference sequence.
After obtaining your mtDNA profile we will perform our scientific analysis of your mtDNA.
You will receive a representative list of your best matches which may contain information about the language, tribe and geographical coordinates of your best matches.
Most of the sequences included in our scientific database are samples from anonymous donors, included in a scientific publication.
You will receive literature references for the most suitable publications which contain your genetic matches
We will identify genetic cousins for you in our database and plot them on a world map.
Additionally we will identify your matriline (“haplogroup” or “Daughter of Eve”), which will show to which evolutionary branch your mtDNA belongs.
The plotted circles on the world map will show you the number of individuals included and the population percentage sharing your mtDNA profile.
The map, in pdf-format, will be sent to you with the list of individual matches by mail.
To open the results in pdf-format you may download the Adobe Acrobat Reader, available for free on the internet.
Because this process needs to be done partly manual we will need up to six weeks to generate the results after we received your sample.
