Geneanet has just launched Geneanet DNA, a new beta test service which allows people to upload the raw data of a DNA test kit taken with any company, to compare it to other Geneanet members’ DNA data, and to find members whith whom they share DNA segments.
The company, based in France, says you only have to download your raw DNA data from the site of your provider and to upload it to their database. They aim to make it very easy and Geneanet has some help tutorials to aid people who want to take advantage of this European service no matter if you have taken a DNA test kit at AncestryDNA, 23andMe, MyHeritage, FamilyTreeDNA or Living DNA.
Geneanet claims to deal with the rest of it thanks to powerful matching tools.
On thier website they say:
"At Geneanet, we do genealogy, only genealogy. We think that DNA tests are an additional tool for finding new relatives.
Of course, this new service does not replace genealogy research as we do it for years but it’s an additional way of finding new branches and relatives."
An interesting piece of news from the BBC reports on how scientists are investigating the murder of a man in Northampton in 1930. At the time, the man's badly-burned body was examined and samples taken during a post-mortem examination at a pub near the crime scene in the village of Hardingstone. The perpetrator was soon caught but the body was never identified.
Decades later, a woman was investigating her family ancestry when her grandmother revealed her long-held belief that her uncle was the man burned to death in a car.The uncle, William Thomas Briggs, left his home in London for a doctor's appointment in November 1930, but disappeared and was never seen again. "My family were convinced that William was the victim," said Samantha Hall, whose grandmother had confided in her.
The family were put in touch with the University of Leicester and the team that successfully identified King Richard III whose bones were found under a Leicester car park in 2012.
"The scientists were able to obtain a full single male mtDNA profile from the slide to compare to the family," a spokeswoman for the team said. The result is due to be revealed to Ms Hall shortly. There's more details available from the BBC website.
