Newby with questions re paternal line

[Lauriec]

Hi, I'm brand new here, having just collected DNA from my mother. My question is about her father. She never knew her father. Is there any way to gather information and which test is best. My mom's children are all girls but she has one grandson. Would it be useful to gather his DNA?
Or would it be best to see what results we get from my mom's DNA.

thanks for any help.

L

[khazaria]

My question is about her father. She never knew her father. Is there any way to gather information and which test is best.

Only the Family Finder test is applicable to try to provide answers for her situation.

With that test, she will receive both autosomal DNA and X-DNA results, and about half of each of those come from her father.

If she has close relatives on her mother's side of the family who can test as well, such as a first cousin or second cousin, that would help in separating some of the maternal side from paternal side segments and matches.

But she has no Y chromosome to directly test her father's line in isolation.

Testing her daughters' or grandson's Family Finder in addition to herself can help with what's called phasing - a technique used in combination with other techniques to validate matches as real. A long enough segment that's found in both a parent and child, or a grandparent and grandchild, that matches the same people will be valid. I recommend testing one of the daughters in preference over the grandson.

[Lauriec]

thanks, we have swabbed for the autosomal test- do we need another swap for the X-DNA?

[KATM]

X-DNA is included in the autosomal test (Family Finder). It is one of the 23 autosomal chromosomes.

If you decide at a later time to do a mitochondrial test (mtDNA), you usually do not need to do another swabbing, because the original sample should have enough to do further tests.

[Lauriec]

thanks for all of the help with this questions!