How does this work?

[Cats]

I understand that you can not trace a male line from a female. Does that mean that as a femlae I have none of my fathers DNA markers? To rephrase it does that mean that my daughter's DNA is only from me? Does it mean my son got his DNA from both me and my husband? Are there not subtles clues to my father somewhere in my DNA?

I hope this is not a really dumb question.

[Pleroma]

Wikipedia has a good overview of the three types of tests available. This is a link to their page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genealogical_DNA_test

A daughter cannot do a Y chromosome test so cannot learn about her father this way.

An ethnicity test may show something of the father but does not distinguish between the father's and mother's contributions, so there may be no way to know for sure that it came from him.

[vineviz]

I understand that you can not trace a male line from a female. Does that mean that as a femlae I have none of my fathers DNA markers? To rephrase it does that mean that my daughter's DNA is only from me? Does it mean my son got his DNA from both me and my husband? Are there not subtles clues to my father somewhere in my DNA?

I hope this is not a really dumb question.

Not dumb at all.

The most common genealogical DNA test is a y-DNA test, which only traces the male line. Your son's y-chromosome came from your husband, your husband's is from his father, etc. The y-chromosome can trace your son's paternal line into ancient times and, in many cultures, this is the same as the surname line.

Your son has one X-chromosome also, which he got from you. You, on the other hand, have two x-chromosomes: one from your mother and one from your father. Your daughter has two x-chromosomes: one from you and one from her father. X-chromosome testing is in its infancy, but FTDNA is now offering some X-chromosome tests and there are several other threads on this message board about it. Analysis is complex, but you might be interested in this topic.

X and Y account for only one of the 23 pairs of chromosomes that your children have. For each of the other 22 pairs in your children, one came from you and one came from their father. These 22 pairs are called autosomes, and these can be tested as well.

Both of your children have also mitochondrial DNA, which they got from you. You got yours from your mother, she got hers from her mother, etc. mtDNA tests can trace the maternal line into ancient times.