Rene Syler's Very Personal Journey
Unlike other ethnic groups, many African Americans know little about their personal history before slavery. But thanks to new DNA tests, a simple cotton swab rubbed on the inside of a cheek can help people travel back in time, long before slavery, to discover their ancestral roots in Africa.
The Early Show co-anchor Rene Syler decided to take those tests and
Syler says she was about 10 when she started asking questions about her ancestry — and now hears very similar questions from her own son. She turned to her mother for answers, but both women had only a vague idea of their ancestry.
"In fact, me in particular, I was accepted as either French, Indian or Italian even, or Spanish. People have thought of me as all kinds of races," said Syler's mother, Anne.
Syler says she has always wanted to know more about her background because the color of her skin has brought both pride and pain. She recalled a day in fourth grade when every child in the class had a chance to talk about their heritage, except her.
"I can remember coming home and telling my mom that the teacher, by the time they got around to me, they were out of time and the teacher said, 'Well, we all know Rene is from Africa so, we don't need to go into that,'" Syler said.
Africa is huge and Syler, like many others, wanted more details about her roots. In particular, she wanted to be able to teach her children that their history does not begin with slavery.
So Syler submitted a swab from her check for a test that measures genetic material called mitochondrial DNA, which passes unchanged from generation to generation. In taking this test, Syler is one of thousands of African Americans hoping to trace their DNA to somewhere in Africa. The number of people seeking this information has doubled this year, according to geneticist Rick Kittles.
"Just doing this allows us to break apart and tear down some of these boundaries that we've set up and these rules of inheritance and classification," Kittles told Syler. "Just looking at ancestry breaks down those walls."
Syler's mother also told her she was part Native American, so she took a second test that would check her overall DNA and tell her where else her ancestors are from besides Africa.
When the results arrived, Syler pored over the information inside. "It is with great pleasure that I report our matriclan analysis successfully identified your maternal genetic ancestry," the letter began. "People in the United States, belonging to this haplogroup, share ancestry with either the Irish, British or Scandinavians."
The results were not quite what she expected. "I thought, you've gotta be kidding me! Me with Irish, British or Scandinavian blood?" she said. "But what I found out is that as many as a thousand ancestral lines converged in me in just the last several hundred years. It's just that this one line led from Africa to Europe 60,000 years ago.
The other DNA test was somewhat more straightforward, showing her ancestral makeup as 59 percent sub-Saharan African, 25 percent European, 14 percent Native American, and 2 percent East Asian.
Syler described her reaction to this information as "blown away."
"Life is funny," she said. "Sometimes more information just leads to more questions."
As of now, Syler says she is still sorting out all of the emotions after her tests. She says the results don't change who she is, but they have given her and her family some specific information about where they come from.
For more information, check out DNA Print Genomics or African Ancestry.