Pater emon o en tois ouranois – About paternity testing

The Lord’s prayer has been translated into nearly all languages (where 1,377 languages are online). Having a father in heaven is comforting but from a genetic standpoint we don´t take it literally (in contrast to some other family relationships in the Lutheran tradition).

Although pedigrees usually list only father names, the absolute amount of DNA transmitted from father to children is less than for women, who always transmit a long X as well as mitochondrial DNA. When testing for paternity in family studies, my experience is that about 3% of the children do not match with their fathers (while I have never found a mother that did not match). This fact does not seem to be new: Already the Romans knew that “Mater certa, pater semper incertus“.

Is DNA testing for paternity really so important as many commercial websites make you to believe? Genes are part of our existence, environment is another as well as what WE want to achieve in life. Nay, nay, genes are not so important knowing so many wonderful non-genetic fathers.