Category: DNA

Oh Those Busy Little WikiTreers! Find Shared DNA Haplogroups In WikiTree’s Limbs

Oh those busy little WikiTreers!

They have found a way to use the information input by WikiTreer Volunteers, WikiTreers, to show a listing of others on WikiTree, who have done YDNA and/or mtDNA testing and their shared Haplogroups. Here is the G2G (WikiTree Genealogist to Genealogist Forum) Post from Peter Roberts about it.

This is no small task. considering getting volunteers to agree to and work collaborative on anything. Just Imagine trying to wrangle 348,649 people to do anything together. Now imagine getting 348,649 family historians, genealogists, genetic genealogists, history geeks, geneaDORKS (this title inspired by Thomas MacEntee), together to work on something so useful! It happens everyday on WikiTree.

So what does this new little tweak to the big ole shared tree mean to me?

wikitreehapsearch

I’ll tell ya. I followed the link to the Y-DNA list. When the page opened I clicked into my browsers “Find” function and searched my Dad’s, and many, many of western europes Haplogroup, R-M269 and up popped all the people on WikiTree who share that Haplogrpup with my Dad. I used my browsers find feature again and looked for my Surname – Gaulden. The list shoed my Dad and other spelling variants of Gaulden with “gaulden” as its root. I searched the other spelling variants, Gaulding, Golden, Goulding, Gauldin and others and found people on WikiTree that I didn’t know about who share my Dad’s DNA. NICE!

wikitreemtsearch

So I did it again on the mtDNA list, with my mtDNA Haplogroup, and found only 12 people who match my specific Haplogroup, H1b1-T16362C. Not an incredibly common Haplogroup so only 12. But, 12! once again I didn’t know anything about the majority of these haplogroup matches on WikiTree until today!

Grandma’s found some new clues to her family history/mysteries. Off I go to climb around the limbs of WikiTree to try and find some new cousins! Whee Doggie!

I Am So Sorry Dad – We’re Pending.

This could end up being very humorous or a nightmare.

I was excited to hear the great news that FTDNA (FamilyTree DNA) has added a phasing ability to their matches results. Just Great! I love it! I am all over it!

I jumped into my DNA matches before I even finished reading the email. I like the new layout with the tabs navigation – makes things very easy to see in a “nutshell”. You won’t be able to be eligible to use this feature, be able to click on the tabs, until you get yourself linked to another match who is in your tree. The “tree” refers to the GEDCOM/Tree you uploaded to FamilyTree DNA. Continue reading “I Am So Sorry Dad – We’re Pending.”

DNA and something called Phasing – 1 Parent

Had this question yesterday, “I uploaded my fathers raw data to GEDmatch. Now how do we do the phasing if I don’t have my mothers DNA?”

Phasing “is the process of trying to determine which DNA came from the mother, and which came from the father. The term is usually applied to types of DNA that recombine, such as autosomal DNA or the X-chromosome. The benefit of phasing is being able to identify which ancestor a segment was inherited from.” http://isogg.org/wiki/Phasing Continue reading “DNA and something called Phasing – 1 Parent”

DNA – Understanding Your Results? Ethnicity/Origins

Oh, I always have a good chuckle when I see blog or forum posts with this subject line, which is why I added a question mark at the end. How on earth are you, the family geneaarchivisty person or genealogist supposed to suddenly become a DNA expert and understand the overwhelming amount of information included in your DNA test results?

Well, you understand enough to have figured out  Why DNA, Who to Test and Where to Test. You ordered your kit, swabbed your cheek, sent it off and now you have the results back and…

Ethnicity/Origins

The National Geographic Genographic Project, Geno 2, test results are geared toward this specifically. The project is attempting to identify, through DNA, the origins of us all. It’s a noble work, as they will be able to establish (are already establishing) our genetic roots. This is shifting sand, because, as our migrations from place to place have increased so has our DNA mix. If this is what you want to know then this is your test as “Our testing focuses on deep ancestry from an anthropological perspective. It is not primarily a genealogy testing service…” The Genographic Project -FAQ

Mentioning shifting sands…Check back on your Ethnicity/Origins results frequently because as more people test the more the data improves. You might start out at 98% European today and in two months you may be 96% European. Not big changes for sure but over time you may see your numbers go up and down a bit.

On FamilyTreeDNA find your “My Origins” section of your Family Finder test.Clicking “My Origins” will take you to a map, a breakdown of your ethnicity and a list of matches with their ethnicity.

On Ancestry it’s under DNA. Clicking on DNA will take you to a page that summarizes your information, with a map of your origins and a pie chart showing your ethnic make-up and a link to click to go more in-depth.

On 23andMe it’s in Ancestral Composition, click “Go” and you will see a color-coded map of your origins and percentages of your ethnic breakdown.

On all of these pages hover and click all round to see if there are things for you to read, aside from the obvious verbiage. You can also look over a few of your top DNA matches (the people you share part of your DNA with) without leaving the page. Have fun learning about where you came from in the grand scheme of things.

 

 

DNA – Where to Test?

This is a subject that has been whipped, but good. There isn’t a lot to add to the information about where to DNA test, but since some of my readership may be looking only to me for this very advice (delusions of grandeur), I have to whip it one more time. If you have already been around the block on this, you can sit back with a nice piece of hot blueberry pie while I ramble on, entertainingly, about where to test. The rest get your pie at the end.

Sticker Shock – It’s not a new car, but…

Prices range from around $99.00 US to about $249.00 US for single tests. If you don’t live in the US and your currency isn’t doing well against the US dollar, prepare for even more sticker shock and high fees for shipping.

You can get an Autsomal Test and/or a y-DNA test or mtDNA test and you can order a test: from 23andMe, Ancestry, FamilyTreeDNA, My Heritage and National Geographic.

The companies vary in the tests they offer so you should spend time looking over the FAQ for each company to decide which one is right for you, based on what you want to know and what test you need to point you in the right direction. A previous blog post gives some advice on the, “what you want to know” and the “what tests” for you here: DNA- Who to Test?

Testing Companies

Ancestry FAQ
FamilyTreeDNA FAQ
23andMe FAQ
My Heritage FAQ (bottom of page)
National Geographic Geno 2.0 FAQ

Is Testing Available Everywhere?

No. You will want to read to make sure testing is available for your area. For example, Ancestry DNA testing is only “available in the United States and for purchase online for residents of the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.”- Ancestry FAQ #10.

Now that that is done, everyone enjoy the hot from the oven blueberry pie I just served you! Some Vanilla Ice cream too!

Also see Why DNA? to see why you would want to do DNA testing.

Genetic DNA, Patience Is The Word

DNA has been around since…well forever. It will be around forever. What has not been around forever has been our ability to get to it and to understand it. All that getting to it, understanding it and connecting to it takes patience.

I am currently working with a client who is in her late 80’s. She is adopted and she has never been able to find out much about her birth story other than where she was adopted, her name, “Girl X”, and her date of birth. She has patiently spent some of her time trying to gain access from her records via the County Courthouse where she was adopted only to be turned away with, “there isn’t anything in the file and if there was it wouldn’t be available to you if there was.”

Then her kids had some health issues and she wanted to know more. DNA has arrived so she sent away to 23andMe to get her medical information. She did and she seems to be OK with the DNA Medical knowledge, but, she still wants to know about HER story. The one where she came into the world drew breath and was given away for what ever reason.

And that takes patience.

I laughed at myself today and tonight. I sent out letters to people she matches on 23andMe and to people she matches ad GEDmatch. I got a few replies, but one of them? One of the relies has the promise of bigger answers to her questions. This match is so very close to her. But, I worked all day and heard nothing. I ate dinner and after dinner I was scheduled for a webinar through the Association of Professional Genealogists and just as I was getting myself signed in for the said webinar I see my mailbox lights up. It has just received the first of two emails from the match with the bigger answers…Oh the patience it took to stay the course and participate in the webinar. I did it, though I still haven’t opened the emails yet. I was so struck by the little bit of patience I needed to have, just for an hour and a half tonight, that I wanted to write this blog post while it was still such a real feeling for me. And to think my client has been waiting patiently for a lifetime to receive her answers.

Patience is the word.

McElmoyle DNA and One Name Project

Oh the trials and tribulations of administering/managing a One Name Study and DNA Project for a not so popular (it’s not like these people were left out of the prom, is popular really a good word?) Surname (and popular, it isn’t like these people chose to be named this, like it was the most popular name so they took it).

After years of talking to a friend(?)/fb buddy about her husbands family’s possible connection to my family, her husband got a DNA test done. She and he chose to go with Ancestry, so all we have is an Ancestry atDNA test. Since my Dad and I are the only other testers for the McElmoyle family line (that I know of) and our DNA is not with Ancestry, I grabbed her husbands DNA and uploaded it to GEDmatch and BOOM – not a match – Dang.

Yet.

Why? Because Autosomal testing only reveals matches back for a certain distance. I explained this in a previous blog, DNA – Who To Test?

“For other relatively close cousins, that are not in your direct maternal or paternal line, you can test anyone who matches you through your genealogical research. They can take an Autosomal (auDNA/atDNA) test. This is not a deep ancestor test and ‘can be used to confirm relationships with a high level of accuracy for parent/child relationships and all relationships up to the second cousin level. For all relationships other than parent/child relationships additional contextual and genealogical information is required to confirm the nature of the relationship.'(ISOGG –Accuracy of tests)”

So this means we have our first male line, McElmoyle surname DNA tester and we can compare him autosomally with other fairly close people, but, he needs to transfer his DNA over to FamilyTree DNA, then at some point upgrade to a yDNA test to reach a wider piece of the DNA pie. To put his DNA into a bigger Gene pool.

Patience, oh Genealogy takes patience.

I was thinking yesterday that not only did our ancestors name their children the same names for generations just to make all of this hard for us, but they also split the family up just across county lines and made undocumented adoptions just to stir the pot of our genealogical insanity a bit more.

DNA – Who to test?

Why, every single cousin if you are a real Gene/Genea-Geek. If you are not a Gene/Genea-Geek and you are just getting started the answer is as simple as:

What do you want to know?

To find information about your Mothers direct maternal line, you would test a male or female family member who is descended from any of your mothers, mothers – going back as far as your would like to go. They would get a Mitochondrial (mtDNA) test. This is a very deep test which can follow a line back for a very long time, it “is passed down by the mother unchanged, to all her children, both male and female.”(ISOGG – Mitochondrial DNA Tests)

For your fathers line, you can test your brother, your father, and any male cousins who share your LNAB surname. They can take a yDNA test. This is another very deep test which can follow a line back a great distance. “The Y chromosome, like the patrilineal surname, passes down virtually unchanged from father to son.” (ISOGG – yDNA Chromosome DNA Tests)

For other relatively close cousins, that are not in your direct maternal or paternal line, you can test anyone who matches you through your genealogical research. They can take an Autosomal (auDNA/atDNA) test. This is not a deep ancestor test and “can be used to confirm relationships with a high level of accuracy for parent/child relationships and all relationships up to the second cousin level. For all relationships other than parent/child relationships additional contextual and genealogical information is required to confirm the nature of the relationship.”(ISOGG –Accuracy of tests)

If you are interested in knowing your ethnic genetic make-up then you would only test yourself. This would give you your specific Haplo Group, “a genetic population group of people who share a common ancestor on the patrilineal or matrilineal line.”(ISOGG – Haplogroup)

Where to test? You want to have your DNA and the others (the people you want to test) DNA in the biggest DNA Gene Pool(s) as possible. From a recent class on DNA on Triangulation with Kitty Munson Cooper she suggested starting your testing with Ancestry for atDNA, then transferring your results over to FamilyTree DNA and upgrading to other tests for mtDNA or yDNA from there. This way you have your DNA in two big gene pools right off the bat (this as of march 2016).

Now run out and find all the cousins in your genealogical paperwork and talk them into doing a DNA test!

DNA confirmation Citations

You can say you have proved a connection via paperwork and sources and most all of us know how to post a citation for that proof. But what do you do when you finally prove your paper trail (or lack thereof) of sources? How do you post a DNA confirmation citation?

I got a kick in the bum (completely unintentionally) from one of my heros, DNA expert extraordinaire, Peter Roberts.  I was doing the things I do on Wikitree (where I post all of my ongoing – it never ends does it? – research) and noticed Peter working with a profile and DNA triangulation.  As a part of what he had done we had a short email exchange about DNA confirmation and why it’s important to cite the DNA confirmation in the child’s information.

The kick in the bum made me go back and figure out how to add my DNA citations!

So for example, my grandmother’s DNA has been proven using a method called triangulation (basically I have found two other people who match my DNA, through testing, our segments match location on the same chromosome and our genealogical research sync’s-up as well). I am using atDNA (autosomal) with 4th cousins.  But how on earth do I cite this? I went to the DNA Confirmation Help Page on WikiTree and looked it up!

The citation ended up looking like this:

  1. ↑ Maternal relationship is confirmed by a triangulated group consisting of M. Gaulden GEDmatch #,  Bubbette Blue GEDmatch # and Bubba Jones GEDmatch # sharing a 26.7 cM segment on chromosome 9 from 103,348,186 to 123,946,544

Why DNA?

Oh, there are so many reasons why DNA.

DNA is the thread that makes up the fabric of who we are. It is also the tint in our Iris, the gray (what, you aren’t grey yet?) of our hair, the knock of our knees, the recipe of our self. It is also the road map of our ancestry.

I have, according to Doodle my Grandmother, my grandfather Gaulden’s hair and eyes. I can see in the mirror that I have my mothers smile. All of my siblings and I have the same basic build, in varying degrees, of our grandfather TC. One sibling has curly brown hair and resembles, again according to Doodle, Doodle’s mother Allie Compton. The other sibling is some kind of incredible replica of TC. I know that I see my sibling in the face and expressions of my niece. I also see the same niece in the face of second cousin. All our family traits, everything is inherited and that inheritance is decided by our DNA.

DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is the carrier of our genetic (origins, the study of heredity) information. It is “a chemical consisting of a sequence of hundreds of millions of nucleotides found in the nuclei of cells containing the genetic information about an individual. It is shaped like a double-stranded helix, which consists of two paired DNA molecules and resembles a ladder that has been twisted. The “rungs” of the ladder are made of base pairs, or nucleotides with complementary hydrogen bonding patterns.”[1]

So in the simplest form DNA is hundreds of millions of very small things found in a cell – each cell in our bodies. How these tiny things are are set-up is how our body knows how to be. This is the basic thing to know.

We inherit parts of us from our mothers and our fathers. We also inherit parts of us from our grandparents and their parents and their parents and…HOW we inherit it is much harder to explain.

If we all inherited things only from each of our parents then we would all look just like our parents and each of our siblings. But as I discussed above, I don’t look just like my brother or my sister. I don’t look just like my father or my mother. I don’t look just like any of my grandparents. I look just like a random combination of all of, or parts of, different ancestors from the beginning of my family line(s).

So, I can ask my family questions and find out about my family history. I can be told I have my grandfathers eyes…wow I must have inherited them from him…but who did he inherit them from? Well, no one is alive today to tell me that. No one is alive to tell me who his father was from first hand experience either. I can go to the Library, County Archives, State or Provincial Archives and the National Archives and find the paper trail. The paper trail may or may not tell me anything further back than what the papers cover, but how can I find out about the rest of the story.

Technically a DNA test won’t tell me who I got my eyes from, but it can tell me that I have blue eyes based on what my DNA test says. A DNA test can also tell me that my mother is my mother (despite how many times my sister told me I was adopted), that my grandmother is my grandmother and that her great, great, grandmother is really her 2xgreatgrandmother. To connect the DNA with the paper trail, to prove that trail, is basically the found holy grail of our family history.

That is why DNA.

Related Posts

Who to Test?
Where to Test?
Understanding your Ethnic Results

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1.↑ http://isogg.org/wiki/Genetics_Glossary