DNA ancestry testing

[What 23]

I was about to order a test from 23andme, but decided not to... I have no idea how DNA is passed. Or I had questions, and still do.

Basically, I read that, being a male, I only get my X chromosome from my mother, and Y from my father. And if I were female, I get an X from my mother and another X from my father. Makes sense.

I guess before I thought my X came from a combination of the two. I know nothing.

So, with this, most of the services offer on the basic level only ancestry from the X chromosome... So, being a male, I would only be seeing 50% of my ancestry on these tests? I'd then have to get another test to test my paternal ancestry, and then, being male, that would neglect ... man, I have no clue. Do I simply not have genetic information from my grandmother on my dads side, being male?

I'm confused. I need to do more reading, as I've never done any on genetics/geneology.

Pardon my ignorance.

I've read a similar question as part of my question here, at

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100212045022AAjxqrE

But still dont really get it.

 

[StarOceanHouse]

Yeah if they're only doing the X chromosome you would only be getting half your ancestry? One way around this issue is to have your sister take the test (if you have any). My sister had it done so ill ask her about it

 

[StarOceanHouse]

so my sister got it done at ancestry.com. If you want an accurate and comprehensive dna test, you should have it done with them. It doesn't matter whether you are male or female.

One advantage the new AncestryDNA test has is that it is not gender specific. Anyone can take the test to get results for both branches of their tree. If you happen to be from a family that has no male family members besides your father, or no living male family members available to take a Y-DNA test, you no longer have to seek out a male cousin to take a test in order to get results for the paternal side of your family. The autosomal test matches based off of over 700,000 markers from your entire genome, making sure you are able to see all potential matches within the past few generations (considered the genealogically relevant time period).

http://help.ancestry.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2920/kw/ancestry DNA

 

[What 23]

I've decided on 23andme. It also does autosomal testing, and a comparison of services seems to show it being the best. As rated, it got a 7, and ancestry a 3.