James Lick’s mthap mtDNA Haplogroup Tool – May 31, 2020

Here’s a tool – https://dna.jameslick.com/mthap/ that is best used if you did a full mtDNA test, but if you did something that gives you a partial mtDNA haplogroup, like 23andMe, then you can get a rough estimate for your mtDNA haplogroup that way. I don’t see a way to upload LivingDNA‘s haplogroup prediction, but may try an experiment later to see if I can generate a report from my LivingDNA results. It’s a tool I highly recommend if you have mtDNA results even if it’s only 23andMe‘s limited mtDNA results.

FYI, mtDNA is 16,569 markers that you inherit from your mother. Sons don’t pass this onto their children, but daughters do. For example, Mom passed her mtDNA on to my half-sister, my sister, my two brothers, and me. While my oldest brother and I have one or more children, we didn’t pass Mom’s mtDNA onto them.  My sister has two daughters and four grandchildren (three girls and one boy). All of my sister’s children and grandchildren have Mom’s mtDNA. The grandson won’t pass it on, but her three granddaughters will pass it on to any children they have. My half-sister died young and has no children. My daughter inherited her mother’s mtDNA and will pass it on to her children.

The two main choices for full mtDNA test results are FamilyTree DNA (FTDNA) – https://www.familytreedna.com/products/mt-dna  and YSEQ.net – http://yseq.net/. FTDNA runs $159 (they offer sales sometimes) – https://www.familytreedna.com/products/mt-dna. There are other options out there for mtDNA testing, but they may not be as cheap as FTDNA and YSEQ.net. Any company that does whole genome sequencing should include full mtDNA results. Those tests tend to run $300 – over $1,000 depending on the company doing the whole genome sequencing.

YSEQ,net’s full mtDNA test runs $145 with free shipping – https://www.yseq.net/product_info.php?cPath=28&products_id=38291 (not an affiliate link). The company is in Germany so shipping to Germany may run a bit. I sent a kit to YSEQ.net a few years ago and it cost me around $6.50 or so sending it the cheapest way although I wanted tracking. You can use a regular envelope and get it done a lot cheaper – whatever the going rate for first class mail to Germany.

It’s probably one of the least utilized DNA tests out there. In theory, my siblings and my sister’s children and grandchildren should all have the exact same mtDNA result. I don’t have the money to pay for mtDNA testing for all of them, but I suspect there would be some minor variations if I could afford to test them all. It’s a theory I hope to test one day.

 

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