I don’t know anything about chromosomes and google is further complicating it for me. I’ve always looked quite different from my peers and I wondered if there was something mixed in with me that would cause that, it turns out I have Scandinavian. In the chromosome breakdown part of the results it says that the Scandinavian is in chromosomes 12 and 21. Can anyone explain to me what this MEANS. Would that affect my physical appearance? Like my facial features? If not, what does it mean?
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Keep in mind that a ancestry tests are based on databases of people who “say” they’re from certain regions of the globe. There’s not a whole lot of regulation on being able to confirm information or how many people have to be in a database before it’s used. Also Europeans have had many merging of cultures and governments and empires, so one country today had different borders ages ago.
Ancestry tests are fun, but not 100% “scientific”.
But to answer your chromosome question, our DNA isn’t in one long string. It’s in 23 pairs of strings, each one called a chromosome. They’re numbered according to size (this sizing is consistent among humans). Different traits (features, genes) are generated in different parts of our DNA (on different chromosomes).
Which chromosome doesn’t matter it’s just an address of where to find it. A certain blood clotting disorder is on Chromosome X. So if want to see if someone has this disorder, that’s where I want to check – I won’t find this exact disorder on a different chromosome because that’s not where the condition is found.
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