A Y-STR DNA test can be employed to confirm your relationship to relatives and paternal ancestors. This DNA test can be used too to obtain evidence in paternity cases where an alleged father is not present. It can be performed to see whether or not a child is a relative of the alleged father's brothers or other male. The genealogy DNA test represents the fact that the Y chromosome is inherited from the male parent to son with no modifications after many generations.
This mode of inheritance reflects the mode of surname propagation in western cultures, where the children acquire the surname of the father. For this reason the test is known as "Surname DNA Test." Women interested in knowing their paternal ancestry can also indirectly participate in a Y-STR DNA test. For that, they need that a biological male relative (father, brother, uncle, grandfather) provides a sample to be comparedwith her potential paternal ancestor.
In a test like the Y-STR DNA test, some molecular regions of the Y chromosome are examined and a Y-STR profile is produced for each of the males tested. If a male is related through their fathers, he will show a very similar Y-STR profile. Through some companies offering these ancestry tests, you can have your DNA profile entered into a database that will allow finding matches or possible relatives and thus providing a way to expand your universe of known relatives to unexpected levels.
