DNA Analysis

Bit the bullet a couple of months ago and my mother took the test via Ancestry... Results came back last Friday.

I'm still sifting through matches but I've found my maternal grandmother's birth family so I'm just over the moon!

Just to add... My grandmother was "adopted" in 1926 so finding her birth family is fantastic. I'm just sorry I didn't do it sooner (she has dementia so wouldn't understand).

Since Friday I have been contacted by five other matches - two of whom I think are linked to my grandmother's birth father (of whom we know nothing about).

Exciting times ahead!

Irishweather wrote: »

I'm keen to get accurate results that don't just say 'Ulster Irish'

I'm not sure what you would be after then. No test is going to tell you your ancestors were from Gortfad and Coolafinny. The results that have been posted are what you get.

Then there's also the fact that even if the results were that specific, your DNA is not a mirror of your family tree. It's not meant to be taken at face value.

My mother's results have now come in.



98% European
Ireland: 94% (Range 86-100%)
Low Confidence Regions:
Iberian Peninsula: 2% (Range: 0-7%)
Great Britain: <1% (Range 0-6%)
Finland/Northwest Russia: <1% (Range: 0-3%)
2% Asia
Low Confidence Region
Asia Central: 2% (Range: 0-3%)

Genetic Communities:
Irish in Southern Ireland: Confidence = 95%
Munster Irish: Confidence = 95%
Connacht Irish: Confidence = 20%
Irish in Galway: Confidence = 20%
Irish in North Connacht: Confidence = 20%


To put that into perspective my mother is from North Clare, other then her surname (Which is probably of 16th century english origin) all of her other grandparents carried Clare surnames (Dál gCais -- O'Brien, McMahon, McNamara etc.), her paternal line aside from the English sounding surname had actually come from South Galway. So not huge surprise to see a low confidence Connacht/Galway community showing up there.

What has me curious is that Ancestry has myself at 89% Ireland (range 77-100%) which is noticeably less than both my parents (94% and 95%). I wonder if this is result of fact that when my test was done they had a smaller Irish reference population to compare it with, or is it case that one of two of my other components are inflated (or deflated in case of my parents). It is interesting that I show up 3% Finland/NW Russia but in my mother's case it's <1%.

dubhthach wrote: »

To put that into perspective my mother is from North Clare, other then her surname (Which is probably of 16th century english origin) all of her other grandparents carried Clare surnames (Dál gCais -- O'Brien, McMahon, McNamara etc.), her paternal line aside from the English sounding surname had actually come from South Galway. So not huge surprise to see a low confidence Connacht/Galway community showing up there.

What has me curious is that Ancestry has myself at 89% Ireland (range 77-100%) which is noticeably less than both my parents (94% and 95%). I wonder if this is result of fact that when my test was done they had a smaller Irish reference population to compare it with, or is it case that one of two of my other components are inflated (or deflated in case of my parents). It is interesting that I show up 3% Finland/NW Russia but in my mother's case it's <1%.

I think that you might have just happened to inherit the DNA that matches with regions outside of Ireland. When did you test your DNA? I tested mine back in about November and got 96%. If you tested a good bit before that, it could be due to a smaller database but I'm not sure, do Ancestry ask where your grandparents came from or any of that when getting a test?

srmf5 wrote: »

I think that you might have just happened to inherit the DNA that matches with regions outside of Ireland. When did you test your DNA? I tested mine back in about November and got 96%. If you tested a good bit before that, it could be due to a smaller database but I'm not sure, do Ancestry ask where your grandparents came from or any of that when getting a test?

Well that image I posted has a timestamp of 21st of March 2015, so I would like to say it was late 2014 early 2015. So an age ago compare to most of ye Johnny come lately's

Back at the time I recall them having a blog post which stated that the average Irish person in their database was coming back as something like 85% Irish component.

I've been waiting for them to update their admixture calculator. They supposedly had a beta version in place last year, which (a) added extra components (b) merged 'Great Britain' with half of 'Western Europe' (Eg. french half -- Germans were spilt off into Central Europe)

I think i'll be waiting a while either way.

Needless to say there is issue that some of my components grossly exceed the equivalent that my parents have. So for example 'Finnish/NW Russian' doesn't show up in my father at all, and I have 3x what my mother has. Normally you would expect to either have same amount or perhaps up to 50% level of a specific component that a parent has.

dubhthach wrote: »

Well that image I posted has a timestamp of 21st of March 2015, so I would like to say it was late 2014 early 2015. So an age ago compare to most of ye Johnny come lately's

Back at the time I recall them having a blog post which stated that the average Irish person in their database was coming back as something like 85% Irish component.

I've been waiting for them to update their admixture calculator. They supposedly had a beta version in place last year, which (a) added extra components (b) merged 'Great Britain' with half of 'Western Europe' (Eg. french half -- Germans were spilt off into Central Europe)

I think i'll be waiting a while either way.

Needless to say there is issue that some of my components grossly exceed the equivalent that my parents have. So for example 'Finnish/NW Russian' doesn't show up in my father at all, and I have 3x what my mother has. Normally you would expect to either have same amount or perhaps up to 50% level of a specific component that a parent has.

Fair enough. That was a fair while ago all right so it could have been due to sample size. Ancestry don't really seem to update results. I didn't know your parents' full percentages either so I didn't know if you could have gotten the Finnish ancestry from both your parents thus giving you a larger percentage than either parent.

Going by recent ancient DNA evidence the major event that appears to shape modern Irish population is the transition from the Neolithic to the Copper/Bronze age, where we first see the appearance of admixture from a population that originated on the Eurasian Steppe. There's a number of papers out there (for example from Reich lab in Harvard) which postulates that this represents the spread of Proto-Indo-European speakers. The Neolithic population in Western Europe (including those who built Newgrange) appear closest to modern Sardinians (and Basques to extent) than they do to modern populations in North/Western Europe.

Of course what should be mentioned is that all European populations can be modelled as admixed between a number of ancient populations. The variations between populations been driven by level of admixture etc, plus 'genetic drift' that has occurred in the intervening period (eg. Irish and Dutch for example have drifted due to separation of couple thousand years, resulting in genetic variants having differing distribution in the two populations etc.)

Ipso wrote: »

Another question on relatives, does having large single blocks of shared DNA with relatives indicate anything unusual (I have some single blocks of over 30cm, I think even one of around 50)?

Not generally. Sometimes it can be misleading though. My grandmother has a segment of 40+ cM where she matches loads and loads of people. This isn't because they're all close relatives and inherited the same block. Without getting technical, it's because certain regions of DNA are prone to "false matches."

All humans share 99.9 percent of their DNA. The markers that these tests look at are known to be the more volatile areas. But I think sometimes certain regions can get "stuck" and loads of people will match despite not being related in a meaningful way. That's my theory.*

*I'm not a scientist.

quartz1 wrote: »

I have previously tested autosomal on Ancestry but matches relating to my direct male line are scarce. Think I will try the FTDNA ydna test. There is a name project for my surname but should I go the 37 or 67 markers. Also has anyone an idea of the turnaround time for FTDNA results. Thanks

The yDNA should take 6-8 weeks to get results once testing starts. I'm the same. I haven't gotten many matches on my direct paternal line and my surname is very common so even if someone has that surname in their tree, I'm never certain that we're connected through that line. I just sent off a yDNA test for 37 markers and then I plan to go straight to the Big Y. The Big Y is useful for my line because there is a person in the project that can trace their direct father line back to the 900s so the Big Y is very useful in this case since it allows people to link in with his pedigree if people descend from that branch of the surname.

It might be a good idea to contact the administrator of your surname project for advice. I was originally going to get y37, then upgrade to y67 and then upgrade to y111 but I was told that it wouldn't be necessary to do this. y67 and y111 are reduced in price once you do the y37 so it would be a good idea to go this route if you didn't have enough money for the y67 at the moment but wanted to make a start on it.