What Can You Learn From Genetic Testing?

Genetic testing can serve many different purposes. You can use them to learn more about yourself for your own personal knowledge, or you can use them to help a case you might be involved with in a court. There is genetic testing that is completed in a laboratory, and others that can be done through genetic testing kits at home. Just what can you learn from this kind of DNA testing? These offered DNA tests by GTL can help you learn a lot about paternity, health concerns, siblingship, and even your general ancestry.

Paternity

One of the most common reasons to perform a genetic test is to establish paternity. There are many different reasons why a person might want to establish paternity. It could just be for personal knowledge, or for legal reasons, such as putting a father’s name on a birth certificate. You can do a paternity test from a home kit. If the test is for legal purposes, however, you will need to do the test in the manner that the court has mandated.

Health Concerns

There are also genetic tests that can look for certain genetic markers regarding your health. Some people who know that certain genetic conditions run in their family may wish to know whether or not they carry that particular gene. An advantage to this is that it can help you take proactive action for certain conditions. A disadvantage is that some conditions may or may not develop, even if you carry the gene. Thus, genetic testing for certain conditions is a personal decision.

Siblingship

You often hear about establishing paternity, but what about establishing siblingship? When the paternity of one child is called into question, the paternity of other children in the family might also be called into question. You can purchase DNA tests that help to establish whether or not siblings have a common parent. Testing can be done to establish siblingship of one parent or two parents, depending on your wants.

Ancestry

As an interest in genealogy grows, the popularity of ancestral DNA testing also increases. You can get ancestry testing done to see how likely it is that you may be descended from a certain group of people in a region of the world. Although not necessarily as conclusive as a paternity test, you may be able to learn a lot about your heritage through ancestry testing. It may even help you know where to start looking if you get stuck while constructing your family tree.

There are a lot of things that genetic testing can tell you. You can learn about your true paternity, whether or not you carry a gene for certain health conditions, whether or not your siblings are really your siblings, and even about your possible ancestry. Whatever your reason for genetic testing may be, look for reliable companies to do the testing for you. Home genetic testing kits can be particularly useful, since they can be mailed to and from your home discreetly. In these cases, make sure that you understand if the company handles the genetic testing in their own lab or if they use a third-party lab. Then you just get to sit back and hopefully enjoy the reading of your results.