Home DNA testing kits?

Question

Instead of taking a swab from inside your own mouth but instead from inside your cat's mouth and sent it off for the results. What would be the outcome, would anything come back?
Would the company be shocked at what they found and send round big white vans with people in bio-suits like they did in ET to take you away?

Answer 1

DNA profiling is a comparative technique; a fingerprint is taken of your DNA and is compared with that of another sample to confirm a match or not as the case may be. The DNA of a cat is still DNA and as cats have very similar biochemical processes to our own it may surprise you to learn that Cat DNA is very similar to our own. It is not alien reproductive material which actually may or may not be DNA, we have no way of knowing.

So if you were to want to spend £100 on such a test there would be no men in white suits coming round.....not those sort of men anyway !! LOL

Answer 2

Depends on the DNA test you are talking about, but most likely result would be that none of the primers or probes they used (which are specific to human genes) would bind to the DNA from your cat, so there would be nothing that came out of the PCR that they could test.

They would most likely assume that the swab "went bad" or didn't have any cells on it to begin with, and ask for another one.

Answer 3

There is potential for error if it came back negative, but not if it came back positive. The reason being that the sample could have been contaminated or even accidentally switched. Congrats. I'm sure your family has been through enough, but if you have ANY lingering doubts, just do another $99 test.

Answer 4

No... they'd probably just tell you to try again.

You would be surprised how completely wrong some people can get things even when they are trying their hardest to follow instructions.

Likewise, there are any number of jokers out there... you can probably stop by any lab, offer them a round of drinks, and hear any number of interesting stories.