The world's largest provider of DNA services has been gobbled up by Wall Street investment giant Blackstone.

For $4.7 billion, Blackstone purchased Ancestry.com from private equity rivals Silver Lake, Spectrum Equity, and Permira, placing a "big bet," as Reuters describes it, "on family-tree chasing as well as personalized medicine."

In case you are unfamiliar with the services it offers, Ancestry.com allows customers to not only trace their genealogy but also identify specific genetic health risks using testing kits. (Related: Remember when it came out that Communist China is stealing people's DNA from these at-home testing kits?)