Each person’s DNA is unique. Sperm carries half of DNA, and eggs carry half, but the mother/father have billions of sperm cells and eggs. What do those sperm cells and eggs have in common? How do DNA test know my parents are indeed my parents? How similar is my DNA with my siblings?
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Maternity is easiest to prove. Our cells have mitochondria which have their own genetic material and only the egg has them to pass on. So your mitochondrial DNA came from your mother. Mitochondrial DNA can’t tell you if it’s your mom, your mom’s sister or any of the females on your mom’s side as it all would be the same.
If you have a Y chromosome, typically males but there are others, that will only come from the father. So you can match your Y chromosome to your dad and grandpa and uncles from that side.
If it’s neither of these cases, your DNA has 4 main components. In listing they’re typically just G,C, A & T. Dna will be processed and come out as a chain like GCCAGTGACAGTAGCAGATAGACACACAGTAGACAGAT. They will then take the child or parent in question and process it and basically try to match patterns in the sequence. The more the patterns match, the likelier it is that the two are related. Lab reports never REALLY say a yes or no that someone is the father. They give out a percentage that then a professional will use their judgement on to say yes, it is 98% likely that this man is the father.
As for how similar your dna is to your sibling, without processing it you can’t really know. Typically it’s between 25 and 75% similar. In identical twins, it’s typically believed to be 100% but there are cases where it’s reported like 99.9999999999% so it’s just rounded up for simplicity sake.
Edit: fixed where I wrote fraternal twins not identical. I had a moment.
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