Why might I get different results on DNA ancestry test?

Question

I'm interested in knowing which of the two DNA ancestry test may be more accurate?
I took both test and got different results.

I got African-Caribbean and Portuguese admixture on DNA Tribes and Sub-Saharan and British and Irish on 23andme.

DNA Tribes is an STR-DNA Test and 23andme is an Autosomal, with X chromosome DNA test. Which may be more accurate?

Answer 1

They use the Autosomal DNA along with the X. You get Autosomal 50-50 from both parents but when your parents passed on the Autosomal they received from their parents to you it went through "meiosis" where it was randomly jumbled and recombined. So while you got 50% from your mother's side and 50% from your father's, there usually will be a bias in what you inherited from grandmother and grandfather on both sides of the family. In other words, you could have inherited anywhere from 0 to 50% from any one grandparents. The gap usually isn't that big but can be. How you inherited any bias will not be how your siblings inherited it unless you have an identical twin. So if you and a full sibling were tested by the same company at the same time, the results will very likely vary. Example: You could have received more Iberian Autosomal from a Portuguese grandfather and your brother or sister could have received more sub Saharan Autosomal from your grandmother. Also for males the X can vary. If you are a male you got X from your mother but she got X from her father and her mother. Whose X did you get? Your maternal grandmother's or your maternal grandfather's? No definite pattern and it can differ among brothers.



Also it is frequently reported if you have this type of testing by more than one company the results will not be exact. The reason why there are no Haplgroups with Autosomal like there are with Y & Mitochondrial. The only thing companies can do is match you with population samples in their database. So that means if one doesn't have or is deficient in certain population samples another has and vice versa, the results will not turn out the same. Which company is the most accurate. The company that has the population samples that best match your ancestry and there is no way we or even you can know that.



The reason they don't use Y & Mitochondrial is a person gets each from only one person in each generation he goes back. Get back to his 32 great great great grandparents and if he had both tested, 30 of them will be excluded from the results. However Y & Mitochondrial testing is pretty exact.

Answer 2

I heard 23and me and ancestry DNA are amongst the most acurate ,but I would assume all the aforementioned above,despite the different results I've noticed some similarity ,as the colonies of the British empire included some in the carribean and many colonists and also early slaves were Irish, and English and other indigenous Britons,and many indigenous west African people's were brought to the carribean and there was mixing between the three, at times,

The 23 and me one described I assume the origin which stated the ancient British/Irish, west African origin directly, while the DNA tribes stated the carribean African heritage and Portuguese ( whom could be related to the Irish and other British isles as according to DNA the indigenous peoples of the U.K. Are said to be at least in part from the Iberian peninsula including Portugal I think), so possibly the difference is that the identification of the specific groups maybe different but not too much as there are similarities ,for example in my results I got East Asian(50.%), in one test ,

but another test ,I got Japanese (50.%),more specifically, as the Japanese are said to have originated from east Asia ,

No offense

Answer 3

You'll get different ethnicity results (unless you're like 100% South Asian Indian or something) because each company is using its own algorithm and database of reference populations along with its own method of reporting the results.



It's *NOT* perfect but that's no reason to condemn the tests especially since there are other features such as genetic relative matching and raw data that can be analyzed for health traits and health risks and those can be a good investment for the future of your family.

Answer 4

DNA tribes has a rather poor reputation.The results should not vary that much, even though percentages might. What do you know of your ancestry?

Answer 5

They are sold to entertain you........ you got entertained twice and if you send off 6 more you will get back 6 different results., so you will be entertained 6 more times........... "accurate" to entertain, not sure it doesn't entertain me paying someone to inform me of what they have that day, but it may entertain others



If you wish to know your ancestry the ONLY way is to research the written records as DNA is not going to do that

Answer 6

The results of DNA tests depends on the size of the Data Base of the facility. They are both accurate based on the size of their database.