5 cool things DNA testing can do

A growing body of research suggests that our ability to lose weight is shaped in large part by our genes.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

(CNN) -- Happy National DNA Day! April 25 marks the 60th anniversary of scientists' discovery of the double helix. It's also the 10th anniversary of the completion of the Human Genome Project, which set out to sequence the more than 3 billion letters in our genetic code.

Biologist James Watson and physicist Francis Crick realized our DNA molecules form a three-dimensional double helix in 1953. But DNA research dates back to the late 1860s, according to Nature Education.

Friedrich Miescher was the first to identify "nucleic acid" in our white blood cells; his 1869 finding was later named deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA. Others later defined the components that make up DNA molecules, identified RNA (ribonucleic acid, the other type of nucleic acid found in all cells along with DNA) and determined that although DNA differs in each species, it always maintains certain properties.

Those findings led to Watson and Crick's conclusion, which paved the way for decades of DNA discoveries.

Today we use DNA tests to tell us about all kinds of things -- from Justin Bieber's baby daddy status to the innocence of a man sitting on death row. But genetic scientists are doing more than trying to prove Bigfoot's existence.

Here are five cool things DNA testing can do:

Map your family tree

A $99 DNA test could give you thousands of new relatives (although if they're anything like ours, we're not sure why you'd want them). Sites such as Ancestry.com offer to compare your DNA to those they already have on record in hopes of connecting you to unknown branches of your family tree. Ancestry.com's test can also tell you your genetic ethnicity.

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5 cool things DNA testing can do