Watering your family tree just got easier
Students at the Latter-day Saint Institute of Religion at Utah State University recently found out how easy it is to find a long, last ancestor. Just spit in a cup.
As genealogical work becomes more popular, new databases and resources keep emerging. Among the many ways to locate ancestors is an innovative database that uses a person’s DNA to link him or her to past generations.
Ugo A. Perego, director of collections and operations for the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation, came to speak at the weekly devotional at the Logan LDS Institute March 7. The SMGF is a non-profit organization dedicated to building databases of genetic information people can use to find relatives. However, the database is only useful if the user knows his or her own DNA sequence.
Perego said in a phone interview that the SMGF has collected 60,000 DNA samples. He said originally it was necessary to take blood samples, which made it difficult to get volunteers. Now, though, technology has improved enough to allow research volunteers to simply swish a mouth rinse around in their mouths and spit it into a cup to obtain their DNA. The DNA is then analyzed by a lab in affiliation with SMGF and the information is returned to the volunteer as a series of numbers.
“We must find people with good genealogical records and use DNA to connect people,” he said. “If we can get 200 people from each population, we can get a good representation of the population.
At the SMGF Web site, donors can enter the numbers in and access a list of people in the database whose DNA most closely match the donor’s. The closer the DNA match, the closer the relative.
“If you go back far enough, everybody’s related,” said Wayne Dymock, director of the Institute. Dymock said the SMGF came to USU three years ago to present the project and collect samples, and had such a good turnout they came back.
“They like universities because people come from all over the U.S.,” he said.
Those who wish to participate in the study must know the names of four generations of their ancestors. The genetic information is useless without a way of identifying the people who share it.
“We do not collect DNA and call back in a month and say, ‘This is your DNA, this is what it looks like, this is who you’re related to and you don’t have to do anything with it,'” Perego said. The information must be plugged in to the database by the donor, he said.
A database constructed with people’s DNA could be much more useful than a traditional database where people use names, dates of birth and death and marriage certificates to find relatives. For people who have been adopted, who have illegitimacies in their family, who are from countries where records are not well-kept or whose records have been destroyed, the most reliable way to track family lines would be through DNA.
Perego said the project started in the summer of 1999 when James L. Sorenson, a Utah businessman, contacted Scott Woodward, who was a professor of genetics at Brigham Young University at the time. According to the SMGF Web site, Sorenson’s idea was to build a genetic map of the human race people could use to find their relatives.
In March 2000, the first samples were collected at BYU, Perego said. Now, due to the thousands of samples taken, there are more than two million genealogical records in the database and people from more than 100 countries are represented.
“This is still a small database compared to all the people out there, but we encourage people to send in their DNA,” Perego said. Those who want to participate in the study can order a free DNA kit at the SMGF Web site.
Perego said Sorenson left BYU in 2003 to become the director of SMGF. Several of his students, Perego said, followed him and now work on the project.
The effects and uses of the information gathered by SMGF may reach farther than a few families’ genealogical records, Woodward said in a phone interview.
“We believe that if people understand not only that they are related, but how and how closely, it will affect how they treat each other,” he said.
Woodward said there is only one database currently available to the public, which can be used to track father-to-son lineage. The database compares the Y chromosome, which is found only in male DNA and is passed on by the father. Woodward said a mitochondrial DNA, which tracks the mother’s line, is in the works, as is an autosomal database, which tracks DNA from both parents.
Perego said that one of the biggest challenges the project faces is that those who are interested in genealogy are a relatively small segment of the population.
“Most people who are interested in genealogy are people who have money to pay to have it done and time to do it,” he said. “They’re mostly in North America.”
In some places like Africa, Perego said, resources are limited and even if thousands of samples were collected from there, the people wouldn’t be able to access it.
Woodward said there is no limit to how far the project can go. He said he would like to see it continue to grow, reaching 100,000 samples eventually, and continuing on to over a million.
“Our goal is to get everyone in the world [in the database],” Perego said.
“I hope it will be ongoing forever,” Woodward said. -ella@cc.usu.edu