GeneTree: Using DNA to Create a Global Family Tree

A number of sites let you create and customize family trees and keep on top of your ancestry and family history, but they all depend on you doing the research yourself to find out where your lineage comes from and who's related to you. GeneTree is a whole new idea: It maps how everyone on Earth is related to one another, not based entirely on research and historical documents but based on DNA.








GeneTree is part social-networking and part ancestry site. The service is founded and funded by the Sorenson group of companies, which specializes in biotechnology and DNA testing; explains why it wants the idea to go mainstream. That's not to say that building a family tree based on DNA information isn't a bad idea! You can still build your network based on historical record, family trees, and personal histories, but if you'd like to expand it to include the rest of your community and even the rest of the world, GeneTree can give you a way to do that.



The service claims to be able to help you answer basic identity questions, such as "Where do I come from?" But the service is only as good as its database of genetic information. GeneTree just launched this week, so before it can help you answer the big questions about how you're related to your ancestors in Africa or Europe, its database of DNA information will have to grow significantly.

In the meantime, you can use the service as a genealogy service and ancestry site. Sign up for a free account, and you can customize your profile, add close relatives or distant family, build a family tree, and upload photos and documents. You can even add friends and other people who are close to you but aren't related to build a real community.



If you'd like to toss your hat into the genetic ring and find out how all of your family members are related or how you're related to other people who have submitted their DNA test results to the site, you can order a DNA test with just a few clicks from your profile. The test is shipped to your house; you complete it and send the test material back to the labs that GeneTree partners with. When it gets the DNA test results, the information is published to your account, and you can share it with others, find other people with similar DNA profiles on the site, and in the end, see how you're related (if at all) to everyone else on the site.

GeneTree's goal is to have a network of DNA information large enough that any person can sit down and find out how they're related to any other person on the site. It's a great idea, but I wonder if the idea isn't too far ahead of its time. As the database grows, that might be a real possibility, but as with other biotechnologies, I'm not sure how willing people would be to submit a DNA sample to a private company who then publishes some or all of the data to a social networking site.

GeneTree's privacy policy does address site security and privacy, but it doesn't say much about what information from your DNA sample is published, who can view it, and how and with whom GeneTree is allowed to share that information. The site will have to make some strong statements on that before a lot of people will be willing to buy tests and submit samples for the purpose of networking with others, building family trees, and seeing how they fit with the human family.