Research into your genes can bring joyful revelations but hard truths too, as Professor Turi King explains.
There have been moments when the leading geneticist Turi King has had to stop filming for her BBC programmed, DNA Family Secrets, because she’s about to burst into tears. “Oh my goodness, it can be so emotional,” she says of the series, in which she helps people answer life-changing questions about family and ancestry through their genetic code. “You can feel how much this means to them, and it means so much to us too.”
Margaret, who featured on the programmed – presented by the University of Leicester professor and Stacey Dooley – exemplifies the power of DNA testing. The 67-year-old was adopted in Southport when she was six months old. Once her adoptive mother had died, she began to want to know more about her birth mother, who had travelled from Ireland to England to put her up for adoption after giving birth out of wedlock. Margaret thought it was very unlikely that her mum would still be alive. “She said even if she could just have a photo, that would mean so much,” remembers King. “She was in tears, I was in tears.” However, in the end, they were able to find her mother, Bridget, still alive and now in her nineties, living with dementia in a care home.
The historical importance of DNA testing astonished the world in 2012, when King and her team cracked one of the biggest forensic DNA cases in history: revealing a scruffy Leicester car park to be the site where Richard III was buried in 1485. They had managed to find a 17th-generation descendant of Richard’s sister whose DNA they could compare against any remains.
Joy Ibsen, from Canada, had died several years prior. But her son, Michael, who now works in London, provided a sample. Since this discovery – and in lockdown, when people took up genealogy as a hobby – there has been a huge growth in people looking into their family DNA to learn more about their identity. “The interest has been there for a long time,” says King, “but then companies started to create DIY testing kits.”
Family Tree DNA, Ancestry and 23andMe are a few of the major players. The world’s consumer genetic testing market was worth $70m (£52m) in 2015 and surpassed $1bn in 2019. This is expected to rise by more than 12 per cent from now until 2028. For a while, terms around genealogy were the second most searched for online after porn.
The ideas of identity and self-understanding are particularly strong in the modern Western world. King was fascinated by how many men wanted to take part in her PhD genetics study, in 2000, because they wanted to prove they were Vikings. “They would often use it [inaccurately] in the present tense too: ‘I am a Viking’,” she says.
In the 20 years over which DNA testing has become such a colossal industry, the databases have grown to about 30 million people. Is the hope, then, that everyone in the world would eventually do this test? “It’s a tricky one,” says King, “because these searches for DNA history don’t always go how you might imagine. It can be the most wonderful source of a family reunion, but it can also be troubling if, for example, someone doing a DNA test at home contacts a potential relative who doesn’t want anything to do with them.”
King recently helped a man, named Richard, who was on the hunt for his biological dad. When King and her team contacted his relatives, they threw the letters in the bin, thinking it was a joke. Only when they saw Richard on the BBC did they realize that this was above board and were happy to have their DNA sampled. The results can also disrupt lives. “People quite often give DNA testing kits as a birthday present,” says King, “and then find out their siblings are not actually their full blood siblings.” DNA testing has brought up ethical issues around sperm donors. King says: “There may be men who gave sperm years ago, never thinking they would ever be found because they thought it’d be anonymous, but someone might now find their sperm donor father relatively quickly.”
For anyone thinking of testing their DNA, King advises talking to family first, as it may have implications for them. “Certain family members may find it difficult, and that doesn’t mean that you don’t do it, but it’s worth being aware of how people feel about it.” King also warns against going down the home-testing route to find out about genetic health conditions. “Absolutely use the NHS for that,” she says. “We have one of the best systems in the world for this, and when you go through it, they support you with their genetic counselling.” She cites the case of a friend who doesn’t yet want to know if she has a disease that runs in her family. “Some of this can be extraordinarily difficult and it’s a very individual decision,” King says.
In terms of people finding out about their roots, relatives and identity, King believes that the interest in genealogy is a wonderful thing. That’s not only for science, but for society, particularly in divisive times such as these. “I find it heartening, knowing that we are all related to one another, it’s just simply a matter of degree,” King says. “One of the biggest things I hope comes out of this is the understanding that we are all one giant family.”
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