Yes – I’m a DNA Down Under Ambassador.  AND Yes – I’m so looking forward to attending DNA Down Under in Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney.

In another blog I mentioned how the up-and-coming DNA Down Under shows had an unexpected side-effect – I was spending more time analysing my own DNA results and making some terrific progress.

Do you know how important it is to refresh the basics that we already know?

From following two of the speakers appearing at DNA Down Under via their Facebook Pages – Blaine Bettinger and Louise Coakley –  I’ve learnt again and again why it’s so important to test as many family members as possible.

I hadn’t forgotten about that but I wasn’t thinking about it enough – that is until this morning and boy did it hit home!

I’ve been a great fan of MyHeritage’s TOFR – Theory of Family Relativity.  That ‘unexpected side-effect’ blog explains my success with TOFR.  A recent update of TOFRs by MyHeritage saw my number of TOFRs shrink to four.  I was a tad disappointed but put it down to the fact that I had updated my tree on MyHeritage based on solving one of the puzzling TOFRs – and didn’t think much more about it.

So what happened this morning?  I got an email from MyHeritage saying that my sister-in-law’s DNA results were ready – earlier than expected.  She had asked me to manage her DNA Test and was possibly looking for half siblings.  She wasn’t sure she wanted to me them but was curious enough to do the DNA Test.  I know I’d be able to split her results into maternal and paternal – her son, my nephew had tested some time ago, as had her 1st cousin on her paternal side.

So as soon as I saw her results I started investigating her matches.  Already started flagging some as Paternal because of matches with her first cousin.

I hadn’t yet expanded our family tree to include her branch of the family although I have a lot of that on my desktop program and was thinking … I must add that before the next TOFR update by MyHeritage.  Of course she had no TOFRs at this stage which was to be expected.

For some reason I did some clicking – remember my title for this blog – Test more and Click more?????????

I looked at my nephew’s TOFR – and to be honest I don’t think I’ve looked at them before – too obsessed with looking and investigating my own TOFR.  So I should have been surprised but I was – he had 11 TOFRs!

That’s when it all came back to me – test as many people in your family that you can.  Of course I knew we would have different matches and of course chromosome segments because my brother (his father) and I had inherited different DNA from our parents.

I just hadn’t expanded that knowledge to TOFRs!

Hooley Dooley – do you know how much work I’ve got ahead of me????

On MyHeritage:

• I have 5,295 matches
• I have 4 x Theory of Family Relativity
• My nephew has 5,276 matches
• My nephew has 11 x Theory of Family Relativity
• My brother has 6,278 matches
• My brother has 14 x Theory of Family Relativity

I didn’t recognise the names of the people who matched the TOFRs but most of them appeared to go back to some paternal and maternal lines back to 3xgreat grandparents.

I’m starting to count up the hours between now and DNA Down Under – do I have enough time to check them all?  I hope so!

Remember the basics and don’t forget to go back and check them!

Hope to see you at DNA Down Under!