Real Kinh/Vietnamese or not?

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Foellmi

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Hi. Sorry if this isn't the right section, but I'm new here and don't know my way around. If it is wrong, you are of course welcome to move the topic directly.
Today I stumbled across an article from you about the different DNA regions in Southeast Asia. You can find this when you search by google after " South East Asia Genetically Map" and look at the pictures
My family in Vietnam is from the Quan Binh region to be more precise Quang Trach. The region therefore belongs to the green area with the Austro-Asian mountain tribeans. However, my family is descended from both sides of the Kinh. Everyone in my family is quite bright and even often mistaken for Chinese. However, the majority of the population in Quang Binh/Quang Trach are also Kinh people and mostly look typically Vietnamese, so this assignment confuses me. Does this mean that all people who come from Quan Binh/Quang Trach are really Austronesian or do they explicitly mean the Austronesian peoples? Please don't get me wrong, I wouldn't find it any worse to be Austronesian, but so far I've always thought that my family are Kinh and they are the actual Vietnamese. Hence the question: Are the Kinh people in regions not classified as Kinh areas not true Kinhs? That would shock me a bit because then we wouldn't be "real" Vietnamese in the true sense of the word. Or is it only about the minorities? I would be grateful for some answers
 
Hi,

i met many Vietnamese people in my life. For me they looked very diverse, as much as Germans look different. Some had light skin and looked more like Chinese people, others looked more dark and Austronesian like. Some also had a reddish tone in their black hair, or dark brown hair.

You have the option to do a DNA test, but I cannot tell you which of the companies is the best for Asian ancestry. The commonly used companies are FTDNA, 23andme or ancestryDNA. This test can provide you access to RAW Data. You can upload the Raw Data to another service specialized to Asian ancestry or you can use Admixture studio to test for ancestry components: https://dnagenics.com/admixture-studio/
Such tests can tell you who your recent ancestors possibly are, but they cannot tell you, if you look more Chinese or more Austronesian, because those tests do not test for this traits specifically. They do not test your whole DNA.


Harappa World Extended is for example a calculator from Admixture Studio which could help you, because it has some of the populations, that are interesting for you:
 
Thanks for the answer. I also know that there are different types of Vietnamese. However, these differences also exist within the regions and do not differ per region. It may be that people tend to be darker the further south you go, but even in the south there are both lighter and darker Vietnamese who often differ from each other in other respects. In Vietnam and Southeast Asia, however, you generally see more people who supposedly have dark brown or even slightly reddish hair because the sun "burns" their hair. In colder seasons or with less outdoor activity, most will turn black again. In principle, Southeast Asians have black hair just like East Asians. However, if you have seen these Vietnamese under different climatic conditions, it will probably have been the case with them. And thanks for the link but unfortunately my phone is blocking access to the site. But since I have no qualms about it, I'll open it later on my computer. Are there simple spit tests that can be ordered? What methods are there? Probably saliva and blood right? And are reputable, reliable DNA tests always made specifically for certain ethnic origins (in this case, Asia)?
 
Depending on the company there are spit or swab tests that will be taken from the inner cheek to get mucosal tissue cells.
But how it works is generally described by the company itself.

You have to send the sample back to the company, this can take some days or even weeks, because most companies are in the USA. After that it will take likely some months until you get the results, because the sequencing machine is often very busy.

Normally the tests are done the same for all people, the method is not different for Asians, Africans or European. But how much of your DNA is tested, depends on the amount of money you want to spend for it. Some companies only offer autosomal DNA testing, for example the Family Finder of FTDNA. You have to order a Y-DNA and mtDNA test separately, if you want to know your fathers and mothers ancestral DNA lineage. Some companies test all 3, autosomal ,Y and mtDNA but in a low quality.

The companies do not test the same markers. For example 23andme is testing more medical DNA markers related to genetic diseases. They also test for some phenotype specific genetic markers, but not so much.
FTDNA is testing for many of the phenotype markers, but also is missing some of the ones 23andme is testing. And FTDNA is only testing for very few genetic disease markers.

For ancestry testing, it is not so important which company you use, because the ancestry tests normally can use the data from all big companies. But the results will always a little bit different, because of the different markers they can use.

If you want the test as most accurate to be as possible, you would have to do WGS(Whole genome sequencing) without imputation. This is very expensive 399-1000€ companies like Sequencing.com or Adntro offering it.
 
Thanks for the detailed answer. Now I can already imagine more of it and have an overview. My family and I would just like to be tested for parentage. Is it also possible to do this reliably without being tested for genetic diseases? It would actually be a nice bonus service, but not necessarily pleasant in the context of a comparatively "entertaining" examination if you are otherwise considered healthy and then find out about an illness that is only dormant in you anyway and which you can't change anyway. I could even imagine that some would reject it because of this. So in a nutshell, is there a method that alone reliably identifies ancestry without looking for other things in the DNA? Or do you have to mention something explicitly that you don't want that?
 
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