Question

Describe how you think a child’s DNA is different from his or her mother’s DNA and father’s DNA.

Answer 1

• For starters, you inherit two copies of each chromosome—one copy from your mom and one copy from your dad. This means that your genome (all of your DNA) is already different because it contains chromosomes from both of your parents.

• So yes, it is definitely possible for two siblings to get pretty different ancestry results from a DNA test. Even when they share the same parents. DNA isn't passed down from generation to generation in a single block. Not every child gets the same 50% of mom's DNA and 50% of dad's DNA.

• DNA is passed down to the next generation in big chunks called chromosomes. Every generation, each parent passes half their chromosomes to their child. If nothing happened to the chromosomes between generations, then there would be around a 1 in 8 chance that you would get no DNA from a great, great, great grandparent.

• Genetically, you actually carry more of your mother's genes than your father's. That's because of little organelles that live within your cells, the mitochondria, which you only receive from your mother.19DNA is the material that carries all the information about how a living thing will look and function. For instance, DNA in humans determines such things as what color the eyes are and how the lungs work. Each piece of information is carried on a different section of the DNA. These sections are called genes.

• Each son receives DNA for his Y chromosome from his father. This DNA is not mixed with that of the mother, and it is identical to that of the father, unless a mutation occurs. It has been estimated that a mutation occurs about once every 500 generations, or every 15,000 years, give or take a few millennia.

• DNA Paternity tests can falsely exclude someone who is truly the child's biological father for a variety of reasons. One major reason is simple human error.

• While women do inherit 50% of their DNA from each parent, men inherit about 51% from their mother and only 49% from their father.

1986

• In 1986 was when DNA was first used in a criminal investigation by Dr. Jeffreys. 1986. The investigation used genetic fingerprinting in a case of two rapes and murders that had happened in 1983 and 1986.