Come on guys, this has got out of hand on both sides which is causing nothing but friction and unhappiness between this friendly bunch of amateur genealogists.. As it happened I attended the Worcester genealogy meeting on Friday night, the Worcester branch of the Birmingham Midlands group at a church hall in Worcester, Guess what the subject was...... using DNA in genealogy. As a sceptic on this subject I was surprised to find that using DNA can actually be useful in our research today and is not about linking your family with someone else using a family member from a few thousand years ago. I would recommend that everyone researching our own families should find out more about this potential tool. Continue reading if you want more details about how useful DNA might be, or stop reading NOW if you are bored to death with all of this. Now can we make up with each other and be friends again. Regards, Ian Murray PS. Full details below.... DNA can be used best by tracking the Y chromosome through the male line in a family. You need a living person to take a painless mouth swap from, in order to provide some DNA, and having paid one of the testing companies something between £0 and £100, you can then find out how close your DNA is (see Note 1 below) to all people tested by that company who have the same surname. This can provide you with some limited answers finding close links (i.e. likely similar parentage), between your male line and other people who have been tested (most of which live in America). The other and more useful option is if you can provide DNA from two males, say by going down 7 generations and back up another line to a distant living male family member, you can provide good confirmation that your research is accurate or even proof that you are closely related with someone despite not being able to find the written evidence. This has one problem, you need males to test as the DNA being checked is only carried by males, so you can only find information on the male lines. There is however another version, which I gather isn't so accurate as it uses a different type of DNA which runs down the female line called mtDNA (see Note 2 below), and can provide similar sort of results. So, as I said above, you should check these out and consider them as options. I should point out that if you are in the UK the testing is carried out in America, and the exchange rate is rather good for us Brits right now. I can also add that in my case, the family lines I would find this most useful for (e.g. my G Grandma's father) do not have any living male members that I know of and so the idea of using Y-DNA is rather dead for me. The female line mtDNA is worth me exploring. Note 1 - DNA is continually copied when new cells are made and this sometimes goes wrong, the changes made cause differences in each of us and these differences are passed down to our offspring. The closer to a blood relative you are the nearer your DNA is to them. If you therefore compare your DNA to a living distant cousin, the DNA results will be pretty close to identical. Note 2 - mtDNA uses DNA from a foreign bacteria like organism which has it's own DNA and lives in almost every cell of your body (our cells use it to convert sugar to energy so it is a very important part of us). It is passed down from mothers to their children in each egg and so your mtDNA is identical or almost identical to your mother's and her offspring, her mother's, and her offspring etc. It would also be identical to distant cousins if somewhere back in time you they all have the same mum and this could prove useful. mtDNA isn't as accurate as there are only about 28 different types of original mtDNA found in human beings, so the test looks for these and old Further Information: BBC - http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/familyhistory/next_steps/int_07_dna_01.shtml Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genealogical_DNA_test Ancestory.com - http://landing.ancestry.co.uk/offers/uk/dna.aspx End.