Can ethnicity be determined by DNA test?

Question

anyne know? any biologists?

Answer 1

Yes it is possible to determine ethnicity by sequencing DNA. It is possible to determine from what specific region of the world your ancestors came from. As people migrated and populated the world, DNA lineages mutated and changed. These mutations can often be linked back to specifc groups of people that we descended from. This is especially true for Mitochondrial DNA, since it is maternally inherited. And since mitochondrial DNA lineages can be traced back several generations, it would be particularly easy to determine from what region of the world your maternal ancestors came from.

Answer 2

Yes, see below.

Are you adopted and curious about your heritage?
Are you predominantly African and curious about other ancestry you may have?
Do you want to expand and confirm your family's genealogical studies?
Uncover Your Personal Anthropology!

The AncestryByDNA provides you with a simple and objective description of your ancestral origins. The ethnicity test gives you an estimated percentage of ancestry from the four major historical population groups:

European: Europeans, Middle Easterners and South Asians from the Indian subcontinent including India , Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
East Asian: Japanese, Chinese, Mongolian, Koreans, Southeast Asians and Pacific Islanders including peoples native to the Philippines.
African: Peoples from Sub-Saharan Africa such as Nigeria and Congo region.
"BioGeographical Ancestry admixture" is the heritable component of what we commonly refer to as "race", and AncestryByDNA is a genome-based ethnicity test for determining your BioGeographical Ancestry admixture percentages. The test is the first of its kind ever developed. It reports proportional European, Western sub-Saharan African (African) and East Asian ancestry. For example, one person may obtain a result of 80% European 20% East Asian, while another may type as 33% African, 22% East Asian and 22% European.
Customers recieve their raw genetic data, a bar graph showing the percentages of each group and a specialized representation of their data called a triangle plot, along with a users manual. Ancestry cannot be determined by any genetics test in a black/white litmus test fashion. Instead, the results are reported as statistical estimates, and are qualified with confidence intervals. From over 6,000 tests so far performed, and extensive mathematical simulation, we know that the test is accurate to from 4-8% and sensitive enough to detect, for many customers, a single (100%) African or European great great grandparent, or a single (100%) East Asian great grandparent. Most customers use the test in an attempt to confirm recent admixture events such as this - where the family tree is primarily European for instance but one or more recent ancestors are of other ancestry, East Asian.

The main difference between this test, called an autosomal test, and other genetic tests such as Y-chromosome or mitochondrial (mtDNA) tests is that it surveys across all 23 chromosome pairs, not just one of them. By analogy, AncestryByDNA allows one to read all 23 chapters of their DNA book when inferring their ancestry, not just one of those chapters.

Answer 3

Yes. They use DNA to trace migration (by ethnicity).

Answer 4

I know race can be, but I'm not sure about ethnicity.

Answer 5

Yes, but sorry we aren't sharing this info with the KKK.

Answer 6

NO