DNA Analysis

srmf5

dubhthach wrote: »

My own interest is more from deep history point of view, but I do note that on AncestryDNA that I have a match who is in the range of probable 1st-2nd cousin, they don't have any tree etc. I sent a message but user hasn't been logged in over last couple of weeks. My parents samples were just received by Ancestry so when they are analysed it will be possible to see which matches come from which side of my family.

I'm in the same boat. I have four 1st-2nd cousins and I only know one of them. Unfortunately none of them have responded to my messages. One of the tests is administered by someone else with the administrator saying that my match would get in contact but nothing yet. She said that my match had ancestry in a certain area and may recognise some of the surnames provided. We're a close match so I'd be surprised if she didn't recognise some surnames.

Most of the people that I've been in contact with recently have been adopted or the father left the family and want to know if any relatives know the reasons why it happened or the connection. I suppose it's not a surprise that it would mostly be people in those situations that would be getting a DNA test.

dubhthach

srmf5 wrote: »

I would love to get a Y-DNA test done but I find it hard to justify spending such large amounts of money. I wish it was cheaper. Would you recommend getting the Y-DNA 111 rather than the others? Would the other tests not give good enough information and be a waste of money. What I'm saying is you'd be better off saving for the Y-DNA 111 rather than buying the Y-67 or earlier.

I'm a bit confused about the BigY. On the website it says that it's more useful for science than genealogical or ancestry purposes. However, you have shown it to be useful in that regard. Would you recommend the BigY over Y-DNA 111 or would both be recommended? I also can't seem to find BigY on the website. I can only find it in FAQs.

Well the 111 STR is a superset of 67,37 (and old 25 and 12 STR tests). The specific discount code is for people starting off with 111 STR's which is quite a jump.

Generally what happens is people do entry level test (37 STR's these days) and upgrade subsequently either to narrow down matches etc.

If you have tested with an autosomal company (such as Ancestry) FTDNA often offer a intro pricing where you can transfer your kit and order 12/25 STR's at quite a reduced price (if memory serves me right)

I should also add that they have a Father's day sale on with 37 STR test available for $139: ($30 off)
https://www.familytreedna.com/sale.aspx

srmf5

dubhthach wrote: »

Well the 111 STR is a superset of 67,37 (and old 25 and 12 STR tests). The specific discount code is for people starting off with 111 STR's which is quite a jump.

Generally what happens is people do entry level test (37 STR's these days) and upgrade subsequently either to narrow down matches etc.

If you have tested with an autosomal company (such as Ancestry) FTDNA often offer a intro pricing where you can transfer your kit and order 12/25 STR's at quite a reduced price (if memory serves me right)

I should also add that they have a Father's day sale on with 37 STR test available for $139: ($30 off)
https://www.familytreedna.com/sale.aspx

Thank you so much for the reply. Am I right in saying that if you already had Y-37, to upgrade to Y-67 you wouldn't have to pay the full price for Y-67 but a reduced price? If that's the way it works, I'll definitely go that route.

dubhthach

With regards to BigY testing, you need to have at least done STR testing before FTDNA will allow you to order it.

I'm going to give a general explanation and I hope it isn't too technical:

STR's are basically points in your genome (in this example on the Y if your a man) where you have repeats of a specific string of "Letters" (nucleobases) over and over. So for example at DYS448 STR you see the value 'AGAGAT' repeated over and over in a string from 17-24 times depending on tester.

When you test enough STR's you can discover "clusters" where certain men have specific value at specific STR. So for example men who have following values are probably R1b-M222+

DYS390 = 25
DYS385b = 13
DYS392 = 14
DYS448 = 18
DYS449 = 30
DYS464 = 15-16-16-17
DYS456 = 17
DYS607 = 16
DYS413 = 21-23
DYS534 = 16
DYS481 = 25
DYS714 = 24

This "Haplotype" is the one that the Trinity College researchers associated with the historic Uí Néill in paper back in 2006.

When it comes to matching with other men, they compare say results at 37 STR's with their database and spit out a list of men where the distance is up to 4. (eg you only see men who different from you by max of 4 across 37 markers), so for example if you got a 2nd cousin tested as well you'd probably have a distance of 0, unless a mutation occurred on his line.

Anyways with enough STR's tested one can see patterns with regards to surname origin etc.

SNP testing in comparison looks at a specific point on Y-Chromosome and see if you are positive or negative for point. Depending on SNP tested it could be very old one (A259 is on order of 1500 years old) or relatively new (like the two discovered in the SE McManus group -- which probably date to 17-18th century)

In case of BigY the test reads a very large chunk of your Y-Chromosome (on average 5-10million bases). Not only does it check for know/existing SNP's, but it also discovers new ones which could includes mutations that only happened in last 2-5 generations.

To use a hypothetical example if I found a man who was my 6th cousin on my male line (eg. we shared same surname, and direct ancestry to a common great-great-great-great-great-grandfather), if he was also to do BigY testing it would allow me to identify which of my so far unique SNP markers (found nowhere else but in my genome) occurred up to early/mid 19th century, and which occurred later.

To go back to McManus example, it might thus be possible with enough testing to find a SNP mutation that is found in all men bearing a specific lineage all the way back to time surnames arose (leaving aside issues such as adoption, NPE, multiple incidences of same surname arising independently etc.)

dubhthach

srmf5 wrote: »

Thank you so much for the reply. Am I right in saying that if you already had Y-37, to upgrade to Y-67 you wouldn't have to pay the full price for Y-67 but a reduced price? If that's the way it works, I'll definitely go that route.

Yup that's basically how it works, though on average the cost of Y-37 + upgrade to Y-67 is bit more expensive than just ordering Y-67 straight up. Kinda like when you are doing your motor tax and cost of renewing every 3 months adds up more than renewing 12months at time.

The advantage of course of incremental testing, is that you can (a) spread cost over longer period (b) they do offer sale prices for updates couple times a year (eg. reduce price on Y-37 -> Y-67 or Y-37 -> Y-111 updates).

Ipso

Has anyone been able to confirm a close relative with a paper trail? If so, how close were any of the companies in estimating the match?
I have a feeling that a lot of matches are showing up as closer than they are due to endogamy in rural areas.
I also have the strange situation at Family Tree DNA where my 4th closest match has only two relatives in common with me.

pinkypinky

I had someone match my mother as 2nd-3rd cousin. She was her 2nd cousin once removed, my third cousin. It's pretty accurate for the first couple of rounds, beyond 3rd much more difficult.

Wyldwood

The person top of my list on FTDNA is a 2nd cousin once removed that I had traced previously, match says 2nd - 3rd cousin so pretty accurate. on Ancestry, top of the list is a known 2nd cousin which agrees with their estimation of 2nd - 3rd and in the top 4, the other 3 are all traced through paper trails and are 3rd cousins, 3rd - 4th estimated by Ancestry.

Quite reliable I think.

RGM

Relations out to second or third cousins are usually pretty solid. Beyond that, though, that's where the wheels start falling off. The reason is that the range for third cousins actually goes down to zero. You probably wouldn't show up as a match for all of your third cousins. So that means anything above zero could be as close as a third cousin. On the other hand, a tiny shared segment could be as distant as... who knows? It's extremely unlikely for seventh cousins to show up as matches. On the other hand, you have so many thousands of seventh cousins that it's probably much more likely that a small match is a seventh cousin than a fourth cousin.

The bottom line is that once the cM shared is small enough, it's not possible to guess how distant the relationship is and I find it irritating that the companies don't really address that. But close relationships tend to be more straightforward.

srmf5

Idle Passerby wrote: »

I've just got results from Living DNA. Apparently the download function isn't up and running with them yet so is there any way I can transfer my results to GEDmatch?

You should now be able to download your results. You can upload the results to Genesis Beta on Gedmatch. The amount of matches won't be as large but Gedmatch are hoping to merge the Gedmatch database and Genesis database in the future.

BottleOfSmoke

I'm thinking of doing the 23andMe test, but I'm baffled as to the price of €169. I've seen mention of $100 in facebook groups that are primarily American, and that is about what Ancestry charge.

I thought from blogs that 23anMe have two different prices, one for the Health Screening and one for ancestry/matching. But both the "Health" and the "Ancestry" page have a buy button that leads me to the "Personal Genome Kit" at €169. Is that the only price available to us?

Free-2-Flow

BottleOfSmoke wrote:

I thought from blogs that 23anMe have two different prices, one for the Health Screening and one for ancestry/matching. But both the "Health" and the "Ancestry" page have a buy button that leads me to the "Personal Genome Kit" at €169. Is that the only price available to us?

The one on Ancestry is 80

Free-2-Flow

So I've made a family tree on Ancestry to figure out as much as I can before DNA testing..

Man is it hard, 1 have 2 set of Great grandparents (of 4) names but no DOBS etc. My Granny is still alive at 90 years old and she really can't tell me anything about her parents or grandparents.

Don't know if I'll get much further with family info from relatives.

BottleOfSmoke

Free-2-Flow wrote: »

The one on Ancestry is 80

Yup, done that one, thanks. I thought I'd go fishing in another pond.

I got an answer to my question elsewhere, the cheaper price for 23andMe is only available in the U.S.. Even in Canada they only get the single higher price.

Strange that they are twice the price of their biggest competitor.

BottleOfSmoke

Free-2-Flow wrote: »

So I've made a family tree on Ancestry to figure out as much as I can before DNA testing..

Man is it hard, 1 have 2 set of Great grandparents (of 4) names but no DOBS etc. My Granny is still alive at 90 years old and she really can't tell me anything about her parents or grandparents.

Don't know if I'll get much further with family info from relatives.

If you have names and an area, then the 1911 census might be an option for searching. Plug in the names of a married couple (don't use maiden name) and the town - and if you can identify that you've got the right record, it shows everybody in the house at the time - that often includes widowed mothers, and lots of siblings, and their ages.

The censuses are available with a subscription on Ancestry, you could do a month and then cancel. They may also be available in some public libraries. I remember that Pearse Street library had dedicated computer terminals with access to some of the databases you normally have to pay for.

BottleOfSmoke

Free-2-Flow wrote: »

So I've made a family tree on Ancestry to figure out as much as I can before DNA testing..

Man is it hard, 1 have 2 set of Great grandparents (of 4) names but no DOBS etc. My Granny is still alive at 90 years old and she really can't tell me anything about her parents or grandparents.

Don't know if I'll get much further with family info from relatives.

Also - there is really good info in this forum on searching. If you are stumped, then maybe create a separate post looking for advice. Thought I'd add this, as there are more options than the censuses - but I'm no expert :-)

pinkypinky

Mod note:

This thread is getting very long and a bit repetitive.

Please use the search function rather than repeating questions.

Thanks.

JamboMac

Put my DNA through my heritage and the results are.

99% Irish,Scottish and Welsh.

1% west Asian, I don't think my heritage is that good somehow or another.

spurious

Getting more and more matches on both lines, but they seem a long way back. I suppose in a small country like Ireland matching on both sides is not that unusual, but does anyone know for sure?

A bit mystified as while my mother's gang were coastal and early emigrants, my father's folk stayed fairly 'Deliverance'-like in a very small area of North Tipp/South west Laois/North west Kilkenny. I can hear banjoes.

KildareFan

BottleOfSmoke wrote: »

The censuses are available with a subscription on Ancestry, you could do a month and then cancel. They may also be available in some public libraries. I remember that Pearse Street library had dedicated computer terminals with access to some of the databases you normally have to pay for.

Bottleof Smoke - no need to pay for access to census data - access is free online at http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/search/

JamboMac

https://youtu.be/Gf907q76YY4

Are some DNA tests completely far off base?

Some of the results doesn't seem right.

JDERIC2017

Got my DNA results 71% Irish, 14% English, 6% Western European, 4% Eastern European.
Now have to subscribe for more results, more money....

spurious

JDERIC2017 wrote: »

Got my DNA results 71% Irish, 14% English, 6% Western European, 4% Eastern European.
Now have to subscribe for more results, more money....

Upload to GEDMatch for free. No subs.

KildareFan

spurious wrote: »

Upload to GEDMatch for free. No subs.

I uploaded my results to Gedmatch a week ago, and it's still telling me that it will take a few days to produce matches....

spurious

KildareFan wrote:

I uploaded my results to Gedmatch a week ago, and it's still telling me that it will take a few days to produce matches....

You can cancel it and do it again. I had the same issue with my father's cousin. It worked fine the second time.

JDERIC2017

spurious wrote: »

Upload to GEDMatch for free. No subs.

How can i upload from ancestry, can they send them to me? thanks

KildareFan

spurious wrote: »

You can cancel it and do it again. I had the same issue with my father's cousin. It worked fine the second time.

I've uploaded again yesterday, but still hasn't completed processing.... oh well.

JamboMac

JDERIC2017 wrote: »

How can i upload from ancestry, can they send them to me? thanks

You download your raw data.

Free-2-Flow

Can I upload to GEDmatch without a DNA result? Just using my Ancestry tree?

spurious

Free-2-Flow wrote: »

Can I upload to GEDmatch without a DNA result? Just using my Ancestry tree?

Yes you can.
In ancestry, go to your tree.
Beside the name of the tree click the down arrow and go into Settings.
Under 'Manage your tree' click 'Export' choose GEDCOM and it will generate a GEDCOM file that you can download and then upload to GEDMatch.