On 3/06/2016 7:13 AM, taf via wrote: > > When doing genealogical testing, you are usually doing a cheek swab that will contain thousands of cells (one study showed that the first wash of the average swab yielded 150,000 cells, and a second wash released another 150,000). If a dozen cells from someone else have been transferred through a kiss, representing nothing more than insignificant noise amidst the 99.99% of cells from the tested individual. Indeed, the level of contamination would have to approach 20% or so before you would even notice it. At 50%, you would get an uninterpretable result rather than a wrong result. To get the wrong result, as Mr. Tinney is hinting can happen, there would have to be many more contaminating cells than cells from the test subject. > > This might be a concern for Hannibal Lecter, but he probably knows better than to swipe his cheek to determine his ethnic origin while he is chewing on a raw human kidney. > > Unless he subscribes to the theory that you ARE what you eat. And of course there might be some other foreign DNA in the mix, from the Chianti bottle ... But then on the basis of onomastics, surely Hannibal would be looking for a DFA - and as we all know what Carthaginians ate for supper (each other's children, of course), his DNA would be heterogeneous to say the least. Peter Stewart