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Learn More About Home DNA Test Kits
Genetic testing has become the new “hobby” of many. Thanks to recent advances in DNA testing, more and more people are finding themselves wanting to use DNA testing services to help determine their ancestry or to just get a better idea of who they are in the eyes of science. Some people want to establish paternity out of curiosity without going through the legal process, and some people want to just find out more about their background and ethnicity. It is for these reasons that the home testing market has exploded in recent years for doing DNA testing.
Many at-home DNA testing services operate by collecting the samples sent in by the consumer via the mail, analyzing them at a central lab and sending back a report in about 2-3 weeks. Most of the labs rely on what is called a buccal swab for collection of cheek cells to extra DNA from. With these swabs the person being tested merely wipes it around the inside cheek for a few seconds and then seals it into an airtight container. The main advantages of these over traditional methods of drawing blood is that it can be done at home without medical supervision, and the samples can last for months, unlike blood which must be analyzed within 2-3 days.
Some testing companies also let you send in hair samples, but the main catch here is the root must be attached to the hair. Hair itself does not contain DNA, only the root. Therefore it can be more difficult to obtain a good, usable sample of hair versus using the buccal swab method.
A few labs even let you send in “random samples” of basically anything you might find a DNA sample on. This includes envelopes that have been licked, cups that have been drank from, even blood stains on the carpet. Of course, you should be prepared to spend significantly more for samples sent in one of these formats.
Despite what you might have seen on TV, DNA testing is a little more involved than just applying a sample to a solution and waiting on a result. The actual DNA test can take quite some time to extract the DNA and analyze it for characteristic markers. For this reason there really is no true at-home DNA test you can perform. You can only collect samples to have sent back to a lab for analysis.
If you are looking for companies that do at-home DNA testing you only need to look at far as your nearest web browser. There are hundreds of companies located in the United States and abroad that specialize in providing at-home DNA testing services. Some are even court-approved, meaning that there results are certified to use in certain jurisdictions as evidence in trials.
Most, if not all, home DNA test kits are provided free of charge by the labs. They will send you a return mailer and buccal swabs to take the samples with. You will then seal the swabs in an airtight container and mail it back to the lab for analysis. The main reason most labs send out free kits is they know that once they get the product in your hand you are more likely to pay for the full testing – plus the fact that it is very cheap to collect the DNA samples, the expensive part of the process is the analysis!