DNA Analysis

Idle Passerby · 01-06-2017 11:55am

srmf5 wrote: »

No you won't be able to transfer them to Gedmatch yet but it's meant to be introduced soon. Are all your family from Ireland? I'd be interested to know what sort of results you got.

I got 100% Europe
36.4% Southwest Scotland and Northern Ireland
19.6% Ireland
6.7% Southeast England
5.3% Northwest Scotland
5% South Central England
4.4% South Wales
4.1% Cornwall
3% North Wales
2.8% Devon
2.1% South England
2.1% Orkney
6.7% Great Britain and Ireland (unassigned)
1.8% Europe (unassigned)

Obviously these aren't accurate since the Irish update hasn't been introduced yet but I'd be interested to know your results for comparison.

Mine are quite similar. I was surprised there was so much British data in there, it doesn't bear out in my research so is obviously quite far back. And as you say this could be due to the youth of the study too. My results were:

NW Scotland 29.3%
Ireland 16%
SW Scotland & NI 9.3%
Northumbria 8%
Cumbria 7.7%
Cornwall 7.1%
East Anglia 5.6%
Aberdeenshire 3.9%
South Wales 3.1%
North Wales 3.1%
SE England 2.6%
GB & Ireland (u) 2.1%
Europe (u) 2.2%

Any idea when the results will be downloadable?Sorry for the formatting - typing on my phone.

jos28 · 01-06-2017 4:24pm

Is there any point on following up on the DNA matches that Ancestry send you ?
I've gone through some of them and for the life of me I can't any connections. They sent me one today for someone who shares a name in my tree - Smith FFS !!
I don't expect Ancestry to do the research for me but seriously how tenuous are those suggested connections ?

srmf5 · 01-06-2017 4:45pm

Idle Passerby wrote: »

Any idea when the results will be downloadable?Sorry for the formatting - typing on my phone.

Thanks for posting your results. It will be interesting to see how they change. Raw DNA downloads is meant to be introduced in late June but it could be later. The Irish update is thought to be introduced around the same time.

BowWow · 01-06-2017 9:43pm

myheritage.com currently accepting uploads of DNA data from other suppliers and will provide free ethnicity estimate.

Is it worth doing this?

Ipso · 01-06-2017 9:54pm

BowWow wrote: »

myheritage.com currently accepting uploads of DNA data from other suppliers and will provide free ethnicity estimate.

Is it worth doing this?

I uploaded my info a while back (don't think they offered ethnicity estimates though), at first their relatives list was very wonky.
They seemed to have fixed it, but show matches as closer than FTDNA (personally I think most companies estimates are optimistic beyond 3rd cousin).

pawrick · 01-06-2017 11:58pm

Uploaded my sample on to Gedmatch and got an email the next day from someone matched. We have a matching surname which isn't that common locally in both our recent family tress and connections within the same geographic area but oddly enough my cousin who also did his dna and is my closest match has no match to this other person. So our connection is somewhere else where neither of us have researched yet and not what appeared to be the obvious connection. Damed if I can figure out the connection though and the only family member who could tie it all together easily is dead.

Mzo1978 · 02-06-2017 12:00am

Dnaireland are who Tulsa use for adopted people after reunions and they are brilliant

RGM · 02-06-2017 12:05am

pawrick wrote: »

oddly enough my cousin who also did his dna and is my closest match has no match to this other person. So our connection is somewhere else where neither of us have researched yet and not what appeared to be the obvious connection.

That's not necessarily what that means. Just because you match someone doesn't mean your cousin will, even if the person is related to both of you. Even siblings aren't expected to have all the same matches.

Think of it this way, you get on average a quarter of your DNA from each grandparent, as do each of your first cousins. But you don't all get the same quarter.

Mez1982 · 02-06-2017 9:11am

My Heritage Ethnicity. As far as I can go back Ancestors are Irish. A few English surnames (from the research I've done into them)It's given me 2% higher Italian than Ancestry and Ancestry had it Italy/Greece..Don't think it's accurate after the Irish/Scottish/welsh and I've seen a lot of people complaining of it's accuracy on some of the Genealogy groups on Facebook but would give them a 10/10 for the intro video

p15574 · 02-06-2017 9:26am

Mez1982 wrote: »

My Heritage Ethnicity. As far as I can go back Ancestors are Irish. A few English surnames (from the research I've done into them)It's given me 2% higher Italian than Ancestry and Ancestry had it Italy/Greece..Don't think it's accurate after the Irish/scottish/welsh and I've seen a lot of people complain of it's accuracy on some of the Geneology groups on Facebook but would give them a 10/10 for the intro video

Do you have a family tree on MyHeritage? Just wondering if they might have used that in their algorithms. If you do, check under Home\Family Statistics\Places\Places of residence to see if they have misinterpreted the location of any of your data. As I said above, they seem to think 40% of my family lived in Poland (100% Irish here too).

Mez1982 · 02-06-2017 9:48am

p15574 wrote: »

Do you have a family tree on MyHeritage? Just wondering if they might have used that in their algorithms. If you do, check under Home\Family Statistics\Places\Places of residence to see if they have misinterpreted the location of any of your data. As I said above, they seem to think 40% of my family lived in Poland (100% Irish here too).

Fairly typical tree in terms of Ancestry

. But I have no one born in Germany or Canada...
No one died in Germany or GB... The USA is where branches went so that would be where they're getting that from.

p15574 · 02-06-2017 10:01am

Mez1982 wrote: »

Fairly typical tree in terms of Ancestry . But I have no one born in Germany or Canada...
No one died in Germany or GB... The USA is where branches went so that would be where they're getting that from.

I managed to find and correct (well, change) the data they were interpreting as being Poland, aswell as a few other address inconsistencies. If you go into Family Tree\Pedigree Map, you should be able to zoom in on the map and click on the pins in the wrong place to see what person/data it is. For me, the "Polish" addresses turned out to be misinterpretations of Dublin postcodes - anything with a postcode after it (eg Dublin 8) it was interpreting as "Dubliny, Poland". I was abled to fix it be moving the postcode to the Zipcode field and adding "Ireland" as the country for each one. Now I have no Polish pins listed on the Statistics map.

I realise this may look like it's going off-topic, but I think it's relevant in that I'm curious to see if it changes the MyHeritage analysis of the "Eastern European" portion of my DNA results now.

srmf5 · 02-06-2017 4:45pm

Thanks for posting about MyHeritage. I had uploaded my DNA in the early days but they didn't offer and ethnicity estimate. I got 100% Irish and in statistics all were born in Ireland while two died in New Zealand which isn't right. It turns out I put down place of death as Roscommon Hospital which they put down as Roscommon Road, Auckland, New Zealand. Thanks for the heads up!

pinkypinky · 05-06-2017 11:13am

I transferred a cousin's DNA results to MyHeritage - a total of 7 matches! Is their database still very small?

Mez1982 · 05-06-2017 11:23am

pinkypinky wrote: »

I transferred a cousin's DNA results to MyHeritage - a total of 7 matches! Is their database still very small?

I have mine uploaded roughly 6 months or so now, and all I have are 4 or 5 matches! I still think they are lagging behind in terms of their data base but I would imagine, since they have opened up Ethnicity results to everyone for free, they should see it go up. (Because who doesn't love seeing new ethnicity results!

‚)The one gripe I have with them tho, is that they over estimate your connection....

srmf5 · 05-06-2017 11:32am

pinkypinky wrote: »

I transferred a cousin's DNA results to MyHeritage - a total of 7 matches! Is their database still very small?

You did better than me. I only have 4 matches compared to 163 4th cousins or closer matches on Ancestry. So yes their database appears to be very small. This is understandable since if you test your DNA with Ancestry and upload to FTDNA you've pretty much covered the companies that possible relatives will test with. There should be an increase due to the free ethnicity estimate though.

I got 100% Irish, Scottish and Welsh on MyHeritage. I got 96% Irish on Ancestry and 100% British Isles on FTDNA so it seems pretty accurate for my results anyway.

Free-2-Flow · 05-06-2017 1:31pm

Here's a question for you all.

My Grandmother looks Italian, dark skin and all.
The problem is she was born to an Irish mother who apparently had her out of wedlock with an Italian migrant to Ireland.

This was kept a secret all their lives as you may imagine being a single mother without a husband in 1920/30 Ireland.
Most of her closest relatives took it to the grave.

She's obvisouly sensitive about it as I don't think she knows who her father is herself and she won't tell me anything.

Some other relatives say it's a lie that her father is Irish, some say he is Italian but I have a picture of her 18 years old in my house and she is very dark and looks Italian.

So my question is, If I get one of these tests can I finally determine if I have Italian blood or not? It's not that far back, Great grandfather. Or will my genes be too diluted by now with a mix from my mother? Or do genes ever dilute?

Mez1982 · 05-06-2017 1:47pm

Free-2-Flow wrote: »

Here's a question for you all.

My Grandmother looks Italian, dark skin and all.
The problem is she was born to an Irish mother who apparently had her out of wedlock with an Italian migrant to Ireland.

This was kept a secret all their lives as you may imagine being a single mother without a husband in 1920/30 Ireland.
Most of her closest relatives took it to the grave.

She's obvisouly sensitive about it as I don't think she knows who her father is herself and she won't tell me anything.

Some other relatives say it's a lie that her father is Irish, some say he is Italian but I have a picture of her 18 years old in my house and she is very dark and looks Italian.

So my question is, If I get one of these tests can I finally determine if I have Italian blood or not? It's not that far back, Great grandfather. Or will my genes be too diluted by now with a mix from my mother? Or do genes ever dilute?

I'm in no way an expert in DNA but in my opinion and with what I read, you get 50% DNA from each parent. But what parts you get can vary. You might inherit different parts from your parents than your siblings did. That's why all companies suggest testing as many members of your family as possible, but I would imagine that it only being a G,Grandparent that you would have a good chance of it showing up.

Ipso · 05-06-2017 2:33pm

Free-2-Flow wrote: »

Here's a question for you all.

My Grandmother looks Italian, dark skin and all.
The problem is she was born to an Irish mother who apparently had her out of wedlock with an Italian migrant to Ireland.

This was kept a secret all their lives as you may imagine being a single mother without a husband in 1920/30 Ireland.
Most of her closest relatives took it to the grave.

She's obvisouly sensitive about it as I don't think she knows who her father is herself and she won't tell me anything.

Some other relatives say it's a lie that her father is Irish, some say he is Italian but I have a picture of her 18 years old in my house and she is very dark and looks Italian.

So my question is, If I get one of these tests can I finally determine if I have Italian blood or not? It's not that far back, Great grandfather. Or will my genes be too diluted by now with a mix from my mother? Or do genes ever dilute?

I think "exotic" ancestry at a grandparent level should show up. Especially as they are from Southern Europe, where they tend not be as close to Irish people as Northern Europeans.
A mitochondrial DNA test(check Family Tree DNA do tests that can analyse the direct female line) by her daughter may clarify things.

pinkypinky · 05-06-2017 4:47pm

srmf5 wrote: »

You did better than me. I only have 4 matches compared to 163 4th cousins or closer matches on Ancestry. So yes their database appears to be very small. This is understandable since if you test your DNA with Ancestry and upload to FTDNA you've pretty much covered the companies that possible relatives will test with. There should be an increase due to the free ethnicity estimate though.

I got 100% Irish, Scottish and Welsh on MyHeritage. I got 96% Irish on Ancestry and 100% British Isles on FTDNA so it seems pretty accurate for my results anyway.

So you wouldn't bother with 23andme then? In my search for someone who was adopted out of the family, it's the only main database I haven't covered.

Ipso · 05-06-2017 6:18pm

pinkypinky wrote: »

So you wouldn't bother with 23andme then? In my search for someone who was adopted out of the family, it's the only main database I haven't covered.

They have a pretty big data base, I have over 2,200 matches (maybe about 25 at 5 generations or less).
You have to deal with the usual non replies to questions etc, but they have a privacy setting where sometimes all you can see is a match called "Anonymous" which can be as useless as a non match.

srmf5 · 05-06-2017 7:17pm

Free-2-Flow wrote: »

Here's a question for you all.

My Grandmother looks Italian, dark skin and all.
The problem is she was born to an Irish mother who apparently had her out of wedlock with an Italian migrant to Ireland.

This was kept a secret all their lives as you may imagine being a single mother without a husband in 1920/30 Ireland.
Most of her closest relatives took it to the grave.

She's obvisouly sensitive about it as I don't think she knows who her father is herself and she won't tell me anything.

Some other relatives say it's a lie that her father is Irish, some say he is Italian but I have a picture of her 18 years old in my house and she is very dark and looks Italian.

So my question is, If I get one of these tests can I finally determine if I have Italian blood or not? It's not that far back, Great grandfather. Or will my genes be too diluted by now with a mix from my mother? Or do genes ever dilute?

Some Italian DNA should show up if a great grandparent is Italian. You should have about 12.5% Italian but of course this can vary through inheritance. However, if there's an Italian ancestor that close then some percent should come up and if it does that could definitely confirm it. There is a specific region in Ancestry called Italy/Greece. DNA matches can also be useful.

srmf5 · 05-06-2017 7:20pm

Ipso wrote: »

A mitochondrial DNA test(check Family Tree DNA do tests that can analyse the direct female line) by her daughter may clarify things.

Can you explain how a mitochondrial DNA test might help? I've done a mitochrondrial DNA test and although I find it interesting I'm not sure how helpful it is. My mitochondrial haplogroup is most common in the Balkans even though I'm Irish so I'm not sure how it would help in this case. I'd love to know how to properly make use of my result. As well as that, I thought that mtDNA is passed from mother to daughter so would it not only give information on the lady's Irish mother rather than her Italian father.

srmf5 · 05-06-2017 7:33pm

pinkypinky wrote: »

So you wouldn't bother with 23andme then? In my search for someone who was adopted out of the family, it's the only main database I haven't covered.

I wouldn't say that I wouldn't bother with it. It's just that Ancestry has the largest database so a greater chance of finding a good match. MyHeritage and FTDNA allow you to upload raw DNA so you might as well when it's free. I just haven't tested with 23andme since I tested with Ancestry first since it's cheaper and has a larger database and there's no way to upload data to 23andme.

I also tested with LivingDNA because they are carrying out an Irish research project, it's a three-in-one test, it's not too expensive and I thought that it could be interesting to have a country broken down into regions. I don't have anything against 23andme and I'd definitely recommend 23andme over paying money to have a test done with MyHeritage. In fact I would be tempted to test with them just for the interesting trait stuff that they have.

When searching for biological parents I would consider testing with 23andme them too. A key person could have tested with 23andme and no other company.

Sorry about the multipost. I only realised after the first two posts that you can multi-quote.

Merowig · 05-06-2017 7:33pm

I used Geno 2.0 from the National Geographic Society and was happy with it.

https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/

spurious · 05-06-2017 7:48pm

I tested with Family Tree Autosomal.
Currently just over 2000 matches, about 30 in the 2nd to 4th cousin range. Can identify where many of these are coming from as a large number of them are all the one family, descended from a Dillon from Clare who went to Australia.

Working my way through the others. I got my mother and a paternal cousin of my father to test too and that helps a bit with sorting things out. Absolute PITA when people do not give contact details or even rough genealogical info.

Ipso · 05-06-2017 8:09pm

srmf5 wrote: »

Can you explain how a mitochondrial DNA test might help? I've done a mitochrondrial DNA test and although I find it interesting I'm not sure how helpful it is. My mitochondrial haplogroup is most common in the Balkans even though I'm Irish so I'm not sure how it would help in this case. I'd love to know how to properly make use of my result. As well as that, I thought that mtDNA is passed from mother to daughter so would it not only give information on the lady's Irish mother rather than her Italian father.

Mitochondrial DNA is passed from the mother to her children and continues via any daughters.
Assuming the grandmother with Italian ancestry was on the mothers side, then your mother would inherit that mitochondrial DNA and then pass it on to you and your siblings.
Assuming you are female, you have this direct link to your grandmother which then goes back the whole way down the direct female line to great grand mother, great great grand mother, ggg grandmother etc
Anyone females that descend directly from this direct female lineage will carry similar mitochondrial DNA.
Take this assumed Italian grandmother, if her mother had any sisters then this aunts daughters (and sons, but the line then breaks) carry this same mitochondrial DNA and any of those daughters then pass this down to their daughters.
This haplogroup unites everyone, but looking at haplogroups alone is too broad.
From my understanding Family Tree DNA offer MTDNA tests where they look at the mitochondrial haplogroup and match against the database of people with the same haplogroup and estimate how many generations separate you.
If the grandmother was on the father's side, then one of the father's sisters or a female aunt of his would have to take the test to make sure the correct "line" is being tested.

If she got a match beyond two generations and this persons female line is from Italy then they have confirmed the Italy link.
Have a look at this forum, it may give a better idea of what the test can do. I have not ordered it so I don't want to assume too much.

http://forums.familytreedna.com/forumdisplay.php?f=210

srmf5 · 05-06-2017 8:25pm

Ipso wrote: »

Mitochondrial DNA is passed from the mother to her children and continues via any daughters.
Assuming your grandmother with Italian ancestry was on your mothers side, then your mother would inherit that mitochondrial DNA and then pass it on to you and your siblings.
Assuming you are female, you have this direct link to your grandmother which then goes back the whole way down the direct female line to great grand mother, great great grand mother, ggg grandmother etc
Anyone females that descend directly from this direct female lineage will carry similar mitochondrial DNA.
Take this assumed Italian grandmother, if her mother had any sisters then this aunts daughters (and sons, but the line then breaks) carry this same mitochondrial DNA and any of those daughters then pass this down to their daughters.
This haplogroup unites all of you, but looking at haplogroups alone is too broad.
From my understanding Family Tree DNA offer MTDNA tests where they look at the mitochondrial haplogroup and match against the database of people with the same haplogroup and estimate how many generations separate you.
If you can get a match beyond two generations and this persons female line is from Italy then you have confirmed the Italy link.

Have a look at this forum, it may give a better idea of what the test can do. I have not ordered it so I don't want to assume too much.

http://forums.familytreedna.com/forumdisplay.php?f=210

Even if the grandmother is on the mother's side would the mtDNA not just give information about the Irish mother's lineage (that is already known and relatives on mother's side) rather than the Italian father since it's passed from mother to children. I don't get why the mtDNA female line would be in Italy when the grandmother's mother was from Ireland. I'm just not able to follow this so don't worry if you can't explain it any other way.

Ipso · 05-06-2017 8:51pm

MTDNA works a bit like YDNA for males, it doesn't recombine where the autosomal DNA which is used for ethnicity estimates gets "shuffled" each generation with approximately half coming from each the egg cell and sperm cell to give each person their genetic make up.
MTDNA and YDNA is passed each generation more or less "intact" . Draw out your family tree going back ten generations, then draw a line to your father, then his father, his father etc the whole way back 10 generations. This line shows how the YDNA (male haplogroup) is passed along the genrations, it is more or less one mutation. Everyone else in each generation outside of this line doesn't contribute to the YDNA haplogroup.
Now do the same thing on the mothers side, draw a line up though the mother, her mother, etc
This line show how the MTDNA is passed on, again other people outside the line don't contribute to this. Mitochondrial DNA is almost like a cell within a cell and it remains fairly stable with mutations that differentiate between haplogroups.
So if you think you have exotic ancestry on a certain line, if you can get a person on that line to do the relevant test it can help narrow things down, but as you can see it is very narrow and won't give you an over all ethnicity idea.
Autosomal DNA (more or less your entire genome) is used for that, so in your family tree going back 10 generations everyone that appears would have an impact on your results.

The tv show Blood of the Irish focused mainly on YDNA and not the entire genome, and due to the patriarchal nature of past societies and as men can father a lot of children you can have a case where a YDNA lineage can completely dominate like you see in Ireland today with around 85% of males belonging to R1b.

BowWow · 05-06-2017 8:57pm

Ancestry Results
225 matches up to 6th. Cousin

BowWow wrote: »

Ireland 64%
Great Britain 25%
Scandinavia 5%
Low Confidence Region
Finland/Northwest Russia 3%
Europe East 2%
Europe West <1%

Ulster Irish Community

MyHeritage Results
13 matches up to 5th. Cousin
Irish Scottish & Welsh 78%
English 22%

DNA Analysis

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