Introduction to Scaife DNA Project

The Scaife DNA Project was set up in June 2008 to establish the truth concerning the more distant relationships between the branches of the Sc/kaife family which are distributed across the UK, North America and Australasia. DNA Heritage was chosen as the company who would be perform the tests, mainly because their 43-marker package was thought to represent better value money than some of the competitors offerings with respect to the cost per marker tested. There was an initial trial with five individuals participating in order to familiarize ourselves with the procedure.

We then opened this up to include other Scaifes and thus move towards concrete and scientific-based evidence about our family's origins based upon a large enough sample of donors to ensure that the disparate branches of the family have been tested and validated.

In about April 2011, DNA Heritage was taken over by Family Tree DNA. A decision was made to migrate to DNA Ancestry as we believed this would best meet our current needs. Their Paternal lineage test appears to evaluate the same markers as DNA Heritage which would allow us to make the same inferences from previous and future test results. It was subsequently found that a company called Genebase could provide the same level of compatability with simpler payment mechanisms and so a test was bought from that laboratory instead. After receiving results from Genebase for several subjects in the same haplogroup, we realised that there was an inconsistency in the coverage of markers being tested. We attempted several times to explore with Genebase the reasons why this might be, but did not receive any response. Reluctantly, we concluded that another change of testing company would be required. In 2016, we moved to using yseq, a company that allows for a-la-carte marker testing. We were able to retest the missing Genebase markers and firm up the results of those subjects. This is the company we are currently using.

Since DNA Heritage ceased, the SSG website DNA project has been the place of record for results and publication of research based upon them. In addition, where test results are available in the public domain we have (with various caveats) attempted to include them in our interpretations.

We continue to actively seek new DNA donors for the project so if you are a living male Scaife will to help, please get in touch using the link at the bottom of this page.