Genelex offers two DNA testing options to help confirm Jewish heritage.

• Maternal Line or Common Female Ancestor Test (mtDNA for males or females) examines DNA from the maternal line (i.e., the mtDNA comes from the participant’s Mother’s, Mother’s, Mother, etc.) and places the tested individual in a haplogroup. Certain haplogroups are associated with Jewish populations. For instance, recent scientific evidence indicates that approximately 40% of current 8 million Ashkenazi have descended from four women . The estimated world Jewish population is about 13 million. They may have inherited their genetic signatures from female ancestors who lived in the Near East.

  Each woman left a genetic signature that shows up in their descendants today. Together, their four signatures appear in about 40% of Ashkenazi Jews, while being virtually absent in non-Jews and found only rarely in Jews of non-Ashkenazi origin, the researchers said.

  Ashkenazi Jews are a group with mainly central and eastern European ancestry. Ultimately, though, they can be traced back to Jews who migrated from Israel to Italy in the first and second centuries, Behar said. Eventually this group moved to Eastern Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries and expanded greatly, reaching about 10 million just before World War II, he said.

  Most historical records indicate that the founding of the Ashkenazi Jewry took place in the Rhine Basin, followed by dramatic expansion into eastern Europe. It is estimated that they represented 3 million of the worlds Jews in the third century and 80% of Jews worldwide today.

The four genetic haplogroups include three subgroups of Haplogroup K (K1a1b1a, K1a9, K2a2a) and one subgroup of Haplogroup N (N1b). Confirmed identification of the H sub-clusters requires testing by both HVS-I and HVS-II mtDNA regions as well as the mtDNA coding region (not tested in this test and not currently available commercially). Haplogroup K1a1b1a represents about 62% of the Ashkenazi K mtDNAs which translates into about 20% of contemporary Ashkenazi Jews (Behar et al, 2006).

• Paternal Line Jewish DNA Test (Y-chromosome for males only) examines DNA from the paternal line (i.e., the Y-chromosome comes from the participant’s Father’s, Father’s, Father, etc.) and places the tested individual in a haplogroup. Certain haplogroups are associated with Jewish populations. The Cohen Modal Haplotype, for instance, belongs to haplogroup J. The main ethnic element of Ashkenazim (German and Eastern European Jews), Sephardim (Spanish and Portuguese Jews), Mizrakhim (Middle Eastern Jews), Juhurim (Mountain Jews of the Caucasus), Italqim (Italian Jews), and most other modern Jewish populations of the world is Israelite. The Israelite haplotypes fall into haplogroups J and E. Ashkenazim also descend, in a smaller way, from European peoples such as Slavs and Khazars. The non-Israelite haplogroups include Q (typically Central Asian) and R1a1 (typically Eastern European).