—
## The 1994 DNA Testing: How It Was Done
The DNA testing of Anna Anderson’s biological material was conducted in 1994 by two independent research teams: a British team led by forensic scientist Peter Gill of the Forensic Science Service, and a German team led by television producer and investigative journalist Maurice Philip Remy, working with his own scientific collaborators.
The parallel testing by two teams was deliberate: it provided independent corroboration and reduced the risk that methodological error in a single laboratory could be cited to challenge the findings.
The British team worked primarily with the intestinal tissue sample from the 1979 Charlottesville surgery. This sample, preserved in paraffin wax, provided nuclear DNA sufficient for short tandem repeat (STR) analysis — the same type of genetic profiling used in forensic identification generally. STR analysis compares genetic markers at specific locations on the chromosomes. The comparison was between Anderson’s nuclear DNA and STR profiles from the bones of Nicholas II and Alexandra.
The nuclear DNA test produced a clear result: four of the five STR markers compared were inconsistent with a parent-child relationship between the tissue sample and the Romanov skeletal remains. The tissue was not from a child of Nicholas II and Alexandra.
The mitochondrial DNA analysis was equally clear. Mitochondrial DNA was extracted from the tissue sample and from hair strands attributed to Anderson. Her mtDNA profile differed from Prince Philip’s profile by six positions in the hypervariable control region. Since Prince Philip’s mtDNA descended from the same maternal line as Tsarina Alexandra’s — which Anderson would have shared if she were Anastasia — this six-position difference was a definitive exclusion. The biological material was not from a daughter of Alexandra.