Dna tests

owenc

Hi has anyone dine the DNA test? I'm very interested in my genetic make up because on my mothers family none of them look like they have ancestry from the British isles my granda is pure brown with black hair (the colour in native Americans) with pure brown eyes he dosnt look native at all then my cousins have pure brown faces with big fat lips and very fizzy hair.. They look very African and they are darker than my sisters baby who is half Nigerian.. All of my mothers sisters were born with slotted eyes which went away over tome but about two of them still have them they look chinesse? What is this all about dose this mean I have African ancestry or something? How good are the DNA tests which one should I do? I want it like 5 percent African 4 percent English etc..

HellFireClub

I did one for a family tree project on FTDNA, what you are looking for is your haplogroup type in your DNA...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup

owenc

No I want to do two tests one on my y chromosome which tells me the origin of my surname and then I want to do one that yells me my generic make up but I can't find that what I'd it called?

HellFireClub

owenc wrote: »

No I want to do two tests one on my y chromosome which tells me the origin of my surname and then I want to do one that yells me my generic make up but I can't find that what I'd it called?

I did the Y-DNA 37 marker test with ftdna.com, as it happens, I'm in a family sirname project that is very much into this DNA testing so I had loads of matches with other folks with my own sirname from the very outset.

I know someone else who did the Y-DNA 37 marker test in an attempt to discover their biological sirname and they didn't get a single firm match that would have helped them along their journey.

You could get lucky and get matches that would let you assume with some confidence, that you have found a match with your genealogical/biological sirname. There's more a probability though that you could get no match or a vague sort of a match, it's completely down to the sirname that you actually descend from in terms of your DNA, and how many people who share that lineage to some extent, have already done the DNA test.

owenc

Ok then so are you telling me that might get a link with somebody in another country? How do you know of they have the same DNA as you? Its just numbers to me and if I did it it'd be stupid... Can you explain what the numbers mean?

fontanalis

A y haplogroup will only give you information on your direct male line, your maternal haplogroup will give you information your direct male line. Two threads in a spiderweb.
Now if you have time (and a big enough sheet of paper) draw your family tree (you don't need all the correct names), a very crude version; start with your parents and then their parents, then their parents, then their parents and so on for say 8 generations.
On this tree color your direct male line (father to his father to his father etc and do the same for your mother), this is what the y and x haplogroup will give you information on.
Now all those lines you haven't colored in will have some effect on your gentic make up and physical appearance but theoretically you could have very haplogroup going in those lines but they just won't get detected as they aren't part of your direct paternal lines.
What the y line information is useful for is for tracing relatives through surnames; if you find someone with the same y haplogroup as you with the same surname there is a good chance
you are related. The company family Tree DNA seems best for this.
23 and me will give you the basic info but seems better for your autosomnal dna (everything else on your other 22 chromosomes not covered by your x and y haplogroup). Yo can also get a txt file form these companies and you can email them to peopel like the owners of the websites below and they can show you what population groups you resemble.


http://dodecad.blogspot.com/
http://bga101.blogspot.com/

owenc

Yea but I already know about the autosomnal test I want to do that but I'm not so sure because my parents aren't wasting £200 on a DNA test if it comes back northwest europe that is nor useful for me I would like specific locations not continents... Also I'm definately doing the y DNA test but it's confusing I have no clue what this y12 etc means and all these numbers I though it was similar you just did the test and that told you the origin of your surname and gave you a haplogroup not a pile of bloody numbers..

HellFireClub

owenc wrote: »

Yea but I already know about the autosomnal test I want to do that but I'm not so sure because my parents aren't wasting £200 on a DNA test if it comes back northwest europe that is nor useful for me I would like specific locations not continents... Also I'm definately doing the y DNA test but it's confusing I have no clue what this y12 etc means and all these numbers I though it was similar you just did the test and that told you the origin of your surname and gave you a haplogroup not a pile of bloody numbers..

If you do the Y-DNA 37 marker test, you get back a set of values, specific to you, that are like a signature of your Y-DNA at 37 fixed sample positions within your Y-DNA.

If you have someone else who has done the 37 marker Y-DNA test, and their values are the same as yours, for each of the 37 samples, then you have a genetic distance of zero from that person. If they match 36 of the 37 samples, you have a genetic distance of 1, if you match 35 of the 37 markers, you have a genetic distance of 2, etc...

The lower the Genetic Distance between two people, the closer they are related and the more the number of markers compared and the lower the genetic distance, the greater the possibility that they are closely related.

So if you and I were say 3rd cousins (we shared a great great grandfather on the paternal line), if we both did the 37 marker Y-DNA test, we'd probably match values on all 37 markers tested, giving us a genetic distance of zero, and thus confirming our very close genetic/biological relationship as 3rd cousins...

But if we had a genetic distance of 1 (we matched values on 36 out of 37 markers), we'd still be closely related but maybe share a gggggg grandfather on the paternal line or something like that.

fontanalis

owenc wrote: »

Yea but I already know about the autosomnal test I want to do that but I'm not so sure because my parents aren't wasting £200 on a DNA test if it comes back northwest europe that is nor useful for me I would like specific locations not continents... Also I'm definately doing the y DNA test but it's confusing I have no clue what this y12 etc means and all these numbers I though it was similar you just did the test and that told you the origin of your surname and gave you a haplogroup not a pile of bloody numbers..

A DNA test can't tell you the origin of your surname or your ancestors at any point in time. It can give you a likely whereabouts based on patterns from other samples.
Surnames are very fluid and can be adopted for many reasons, you also have to hope that someone you may be related to has already done one.
It's not some silver bullet just a very useful tool.
HellFireClub: out of interest may I ask what haplogroups you fall under?

owenc

Ok so your basically telling me that it is like a test to see who your related to? Could I use that to try and see were my family originated? What markers should I do if I want to find links in Scotland? Btw what would that be would that be like 30?

fontanalis

owenc wrote: »

Ok so your basically telling me that it is like a test to see who your related to? Could I use that to try and see were my family originated? What markers should I do if I want to find links in Scotland? Btw what would that be would that be like 30?

Kind of, the link below shows a sample of y haplogroups for your surname.

There are 6 seperate y haplogroups; two belonging to R, two to I, and one each to E and G. Now obviously all these people aren't related (from a direct male point of view) as the estimated branch off time for I and R is about 40,000 years ago for example. So it seems that various groups of people adopted the surname or a variant of it and some point. The same happens for a lot of surnames.
http://www.familytreedna.com/public/cummings/default.aspx?section=yresults

The number of markers HellFireClub referred to will determine the level of detail when looking into your y haplogroup and from what I know of FTDNA more markers are better for picking up relatives. The Y dna test is best for trying to find direct male relatives but it really depends on whether or not any of your relatives out there have tested with FTDNA, also male lines may have ended with daughters at some point and a y dna test won't pick those up but an autosomnal test will. What will help you find where your family originated would be if you happened to make contact with someone who you could confirm as a relative and they had a good paper trail. It can also give you a genral idea of where your family originated from but this is based on the location of people with similar haplogroups.

owenc

Yes i was looking at that and i see some people from ni are matched with scotland i wonder who they are? What test maker would you recommend i'd do which one would go back to say 1500s? I'm not interested in earlier than that. Hellfire did you just match up with irish people or where were they from?

HellFireClub

fontanalis wrote: »

HellFireClub: out of interest may I ask what haplogroups you fall under?

I'm R1B1 as far as I know...

HellFireClub

owenc wrote: »

Yes i was looking at that and i see some people from ni are matched with scotland i wonder who they are? What test maker would you recommend i'd do which one would go back to say 1500s? I'm not interested in earlier than that. Hellfire did you just match up with irish people or where were they from?

I've about 25 matches, some are in the US, some in Australia, but all matches have a strong Scottish connection which would be fully consistent with our surname.

I used ftdna.com but I knew before I paid for the test that there were loads of males who shared my surname who were already in the ftdna database who had done the same test, so I was expecting a match and as it happened I got loads.

owenc

Ok so it works very well then I think I might try it then I'm hoping to find most of my matches in one particulars location and I'm going to guess it'll be wigtownshire.. Or kirkcudbrightshire it has to be because that's were most people here come from... I think it's amazing that nearly everyone here originates in two counties in Scotland and not all over... That's likely why they have such a low population

yelofmail

Hi folks. Not a scientist here.
Is there a test out there to analyze just one DNA (swab) sample, in other words I'm not looking to compare two samples.

dubhthach

yelofmail wrote: »

Hi folks. Not a scientist here.
Is there a test out there to analyze just one DNA (swab) sample, in other words I'm not looking to compare two samples.

Well there are a number of different companies in the area. It really depends on what exactly you are hoping to achieve from such a test?

yelofmail

All I want to acheive is to compare my test with another test, obtaining a sample from the other party is not an option right now.

virino

HellFireClub, I notice you say you are R1b1 Haplogroup. Where does the last 1 come from? We just did a Y Haplogroup test on Ancestry.com for 46 markers, and only got two 'cousins' nine generations back, the rest much further back. I asked this somewhere else today too, how is the L21 variant or such like decided? Can that be got from the same test?
I hope someone knows what I'm talking about, as I've only been reading up about it since yesterday.

dubhthach

virino wrote: »

HellFireClub, I notice you say you are R1b1 Haplogroup. Where does the last 1 come from? We just did a Y Haplogroup test on Ancestry.com for 46 markers, and only got two 'cousins' nine generations back, the rest much further back. I asked this somewhere else today too, how is the L21 variant or such like decided? Can that be got from the same test?
I hope someone knows what I'm talking about, as I've only been reading up about it since yesterday.

As far as I know "Ancestry.com" was basically reselling "STR" (Short Tandem Repeat" tests that were performed by Sorenson Genomics. They do not have ability to test for SNP's (such as L21).

An analogy, STR's are like the leaves on a tree. SNP's are the branches.

Your best option would be to transfer to the likes of FTDNA (FamilytreeDNA) who are the leaders in Y-chromosome testing (biggest database etc -- most tests etc.). The "Ireland yDNA poject" on FTDNA has over 4,500 members for example.

virino

Thank you very much for the speedy reply, Dubhthach. I did the Y-chromosome 46 marker test, and the results are all given in values on DYS numbers, if you know what I mean. I only got the results yesterday and have been reading up a lot on it. The Trinity studies on Niall of the Nine Hostages use the same format. The test cost a pretty penny so I won't embark again yet for a while. Ancestry allow the insertion of outside test results into their database, which is why I thought it might work in reverse. Thank you anyway.

dubhthach

virino wrote: »

Thank you very much for the speedy reply, Dubhthach. I did the Y-chromosome 46 marker test, and the results are all given in values on DYS numbers, if you know what I mean. I only got the results yesterday and have been reading up a lot on it. The Trinity studies on Niall of the Nine Hostages use the same format. The test cost a pretty penny so I won't embark again yet for a while. Ancestry allow the insertion of outside test results into their database, which is why I thought it might work in reverse. Thank you anyway.

From what I can see on FTDNA you can insert them into their database for $19 this will allow you to join projects etc but you won't get matches/do further testing. The other option is to Transfer and do FTDNA 37marker test. The cost of this is $58 US (bout €44 euro)

See third party tests here:
http://www.familytreedna.com/products.aspx

they have a total of 227,740 Y-DNA records in their database, so likelihood of matches is higher.

virino

Dubhthach, your reply has been of enormous help, thanks a lot. I think the option of uploading the results to Family Tree is worth considering.

I'm obliged to you.