Many individuals that were adopted would like to try to find some information about their biological parents, or even some general information about the family origins.

Family Tree DNA is the testing organization that gives you the best chance to find relevant information because it has the largest Y-DNA, mtDNA and Family Finder databases in the world for genealogy purposes.

Here is what we can provide for you:

By looking into the Y-DNA(direct paternal line - male test only):

• we would match against our Y-DNA database and see if you have genetic matches, meaning, other people that would have the same or close Y chromosome, allowing to find information about your biological paternal line, including possible surname in the case of males that were adopted or whose paternal ancestor was adopted. While it's not guaranteed to find those matches, we offer the best chances, as we have the largest database of the kind in the world, which keeps growing at a rate of several thousand per month. We will continue matching your results against new people that are tested. We will provide e-mail address for interaction with your matches.
• we would compare your results to our database to give you hints of possible country(ies) of origin for your paternal line.
• your Y-DNA will also allow us to tell about the deep ancestral origin (ethnicity) of your direct paternal line.

The mtDNA would do the following (this is a test for females and males):

• we would match against our mtDNA database, and see if you have genetic matches, meaning, people that shared the same maternal ancestral line.
• because females change surname every generation, the mtDNA does not allow to associate to a surname the same way the Y-DNA does. Matches, unlike the Y-DNA, may not reflect close common ancestor, because mtDNA mutates at a much slower rate than the Y-DNA. Here again, we provide the e-mails of close matches for interaction.
• we would compare your results to our database to give hints of possible country(ies) of origin for the maternal line.
• the mtDNA will also allow us to tell about the deep ancestral origin (ethnicity) of the direct maternal line.

The Family Finder test would do the following (this is a test for females and males):

• You can discover connections to descendants of all sixteen of your great-great-grandparents.
• With the power of an autosomal DNA test, confidently match to male and female cousins from any of your family lines.
• The Population Finder, included in this test, determines your biogeographical ancestry — the story of your personal genetic history — by comparing your autosomal DNA to that of our world DNA population database. Population Finder results consist of up to four out of seven continental groups (Africa, America, East Asia, Europe, Middle Eastern, Oceania, and South Asia). For each, the percentage of your genome that matches is shown.

To learn more about using DNA for searching, check out http://www.dnaadoption.org.