As KPRC’s Chief Meteorologist Frank Billingsley unravels the mystery of his DNA, he gives us all important perspective.
When Gregor Mendel’s little gardening experiment with peas revealed the way that particular traits are passed down through the generations, he could never have imagined the myriad uses that technology would find for genetic information.
Want to know if you’re going to be bald? What your odds are for contracting Parkinson’s, psoriasis or palsy? Or do you wonder about your ancestors? What distant shores did they roam? What did they look like? What were their names? What’s your (real) name? Who’s your (real) daddy?
Spit into a cup, swab the inside of your cheek, and everything you ever wanted to know about your heritage can be revealed. But how much do you really want to discover?
Knowing he was adopted, Frank Billingsley, KPRC’s beloved meteorologist, had occasionally wondered about his birth parents, but he had such a strong relationship with his adoptive parents that he never considered searching for his roots. It seemed somehow disloyal. When a chance email set him on a genealogical search, he soon found himself compelled to know more. He swabbed and spat into myriad genetic test kits, and scoured the Internet late at night for connections to names he discovered. What he found surprised him on a multitude of levels and unfolded as an intriguing mystery.
On Sunday, October 22, the Cathedral Bookstore welcomes Frank from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. to share his recently published book, Swabbed and Found: An Adopted Man’s DNA Journey to Discover His Family Tree. Frank’s experience reminds us that while the technology provided by companies such as 23 and Me enables us to know exponentially more than Mendel or other early geneticists dreamed possible, in the end, whatever our genetic makeup or history, when it comes to our common humanity, we are all still as similar as peas in a pod.
I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.”
~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird