Using SNPs to find my roots

Abstract

South Africa has been a true democracy for almost 20 years. There have been many positive developments in this time; some (including those relating to science) seem almost miraculous when one considers for instance some of the consequences of the Arab Spring. Despite our two decades of freedom from apartheid, we sadly remain a substantially racially divided nation. As a scientist with a strong interest in genetics, my own racial heritage has always been of interest to me. Although sequencing one's own genome remains inordinately expensive for the average person, determining one's single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotype has become relatively inexpensive. And it is against this background that I now have confirmation of who my own ancestors were.