Is there a way to find out ahead of time what genes you have and what will be passed down to children without performing a chart analysis of dominent vs. recessive?
Is there a test you can take? What if your dad was adopted, is there still a way?
There are many diseases these days for which genetic testing is available that can detect heterozygosity, even if the disease is recessive.
I’m not sure if this is what you mean, but people who have a genetic disease in their family are often screened for the gene before they have children. For example, Thalassemia, Sickle Cell, and Tay-Sachs are caused by recessive defective genes - one copy isn’t such a big deal, but a double dose could be fatal. So genetic screening and counseling is available for people who have those diseases in their family, so that if their mate also carries a recessive copy, they can be aware of the possible risks to any children they may have.
But as for finding out ahead of time what genes you have, you can’t really just sequence your whole genome and know what your kids would get. Most genes aren’t inherited in the clean-cut “dominant vs recessive” manner, so it’s nearly impossible to say exactly what the effect would be on offspring (not to mention that it depends what your mate’s got going on genetically).
That said, you can easily figure out the inheritance pattern of some traits that do have a clear inheritance pattern. Blood type is one. Eye color is another, but a little more complicated.
A sideline question, but say you’re rich, but you don’t know anything about your family history. Is there a lab where you can just give a blood sample, and they would screen for ALLe genetic conditions for which we have tests that you might HAVE, or might pass on?
I think the answer to this question is no, for merely practical reasons. The number of human genetic tests that could conceivably be done on a sample of your blood is increasing literally daily, in keeping with the amount of work being done on the human genome.
I know from personal experience…my son was born with a hearing loss and my wife and I have had him tested for a few of the more common mutations that cause hearing loss. Just in the five years since he was born the number of known mutations that cause deafness and therefore the number of potential genetic tests has increased substantially to the point where we have given up trying to keep up, for the moment anyway. We would need to be sticking him with needles several times a year, minimum, and none of these mutations have any type of known cure or treatment so there would be minimal value for us.
I second that. My daughter was born last summer with one of the rarest genetic diseases in the world (sulfite oxidase deficiency). There have been fewer than 100 cases reported in the history of the world. It is always almost always fatal and it was eventually in her case too.
Geneticists and doctors at Harvard Medical School took an interest in our case because it was so rare and they wanted to help. None of them had ever seen a case before and only the oldest doctor had heard of it and it was his vague memory that led to a diagnose.
They are developing a test specifically for my wife and I so that we can find where the genetic markers are exactly and be able to test a future fetus very early.
My point is that there are probably a lot of these potentially fatal or devastating diseases that there are no routine tests for. They may be able to create one but nobody is going to do that for someone who is just curious. Virtually nobody has enough money to do that either.
Our lab, a commercial clinical lab, brings new genetic tests online just about every month. At last count, I was validated to perform 80+ different tests. The lab split into two a few months ago, so I haven’t learned many of the more recent ones to come online.
*Is there a way to find out ahead of time what genes you have and what will be passed down to children without performing a chart analysis of dominent vs. recessive? Is there a test you can take? *
Yes, you can have your genes analyse to see which common mutations you have.
HOWEVER, any gene you have has only a 50% chance of being inherited by any child of yours. Unless you know you have condition which is caused by a dominant gene, or there is a family or personal history of conditions caused by recessive genes this knowledge won’t help.
What if your dad was adopted, is there still a way?
If your dad has an illness which is genetic then you may also carry the gene. However if your father’s adoptive parents, grandparents and siblings have a genetic disease it is unlikely that he will also carry the gene, which means you wouldn’t either.
As yet, we still don’t know the genetic basis of many diseases and we don’t know what many gene mutations do. Finding out if you carry a recessive gene is only useful if you want to have children with someone else who has the same recessive gene. If you have dominant receesive gene which causes a disease, your children still only have a 50% chance of inheriting it.
Everyone on earth is estimated to carry at least one genetic mutation, and may have several recessive genes, the trick is to find a partner who carries different mutations and recessive genes.
Nobody on earth has “perfect” genetics, everyone will have something a little hinky, in most people the mucked up bits are too small or in the wrong place to cause any problems, in some unlucky people the mutations are big enough or in the right place to cause disease.
The same information means different things to different people.
Some people who have recessive diseases or carry recessive genes choose not to have kids, others will. Some people with dominant diseases will choose not to have kids, some will. Some people with a family history of Huntingdon’s Disease (dominant genetic disease which causes progressive mental deterioration and jerky movements in middle-age) will choose to be tested, some won’t.
This is for the OP: Genetic screening tests ( where a currently healthy person is screened to see if they have a common mutation, as opposed to diagnostic tests, where doctors look for a cause of a disease) are only performed on people over the age of 18 who can give fully informed consent. If you are under 18 and worried you may be at risk of a genetic illness you need to talk to your family doctor.
Just out of curiosity where do you work? Geographically speaking, you don’t have to give the name of the company (unless you want to).
In the west. 
California? Numenor?