DNA Analysis

Nqp15hhu · 06-03-2021 8:16pm

The best approach is to upload your autosomal dna sample on to several different sites. You will get more matches then.

Nqp15hhu · 06-03-2021 8:27pm

RobMc59 wrote: »

I`ve read your posts with interest as you seem to have the same issues I`ve had,confusing ethnicity estimates involving NI,Scotland and Ireland.You obviously are certain of your ethnicity origins which are mostly plantation whereas I`m unsure as I`ve mentioned in my previous post.Did you gain any useful information from the big Y test(is that the more in depth test?)

No, I am not mostly plantation, I am a mix with a slight sway to Ulster Irish. I think these sites have issue with deciphering my Ulster Irish from my Ulster Scots. I think this is because my Ulster Scots Dna comes from Brittonic Celt parts of Scotland, this along with possible Gallowglass blurs the lines between Irish/Scottish. With my dad being only 37% Irish, there’s definitely something up with LivingDna’s platform when they assign me of 85%. That’s highly, highly unlikely.

I purchased the Big Y test hoping to find an origin in Scotland for my paternal Y lineage. Unfortunately, I was unable to do that. What I found was hundreds of matches at the Y111 level and beyond, all at around 6GD, however, very few were in my same haplogroup. (So they cut off our line about 2,000 years ago.) When I diverged down to the Big Y level I could not find more than two matches, both of whom were also trying to answer the same questions I had.

As alluded to above, I don’t think there is enough native testers to work on origins yet.

https://www.ytree.net/DisplayTree.php?blockID=547

Technique · 07-03-2021 1:19pm

Am I correct in presuming that all of these dna testing kits come from the US? I was looking to give one as a Mother’s Day present but I may have left it too late.

RobMc59 · 07-03-2021 2:33pm

Technique wrote: »

Am I correct in presuming that all of these dna testing kits come from the US? I was looking to give one as a Mother’s Day present but I may have left it too late.

I did mine with ancestry.co (I'm in the UK)and it came from and was returned to Ireland for processing.

RobMc59 · 07-03-2021 3:06pm

pinkypinky wrote: »

I think you would have to provide a new DNA sample for them to do the Y test but would really not advise Y12. You won't get anything useful from that - the minimum recommended is Y37 and even that is fairly unhelpful. As an indicator, I've got 3 Y37 tests on family members and have yet to find a single person in any of them with the same surname or make any concrete connection to anyone who is a match. There are not enough Irish people in the database yet.

As you suggested,I concentrated on Irish matches.My paternal ancestry could be described as Liverpool Irish (if that exists)which is very common here as so many Irish came here to the Liverpool area. I'd assumed that as my Irish ancestors had came here two hundred years ago there wouldn't be any matches.I was surprised to find there are matches with people whose ancestry is exclusively Irish .
I've been able to trace ancestry back using mainly UK records(census returns being the most fruitful)What I have been unable to confirm is where my parental line originated.I'm definitely a novice regarding DNA but hoped a Y DNA test would tell me where my parental family possibly originated.

dubhthach · 07-03-2021 3:23pm

What I would say is the $59 test for 12 STR's is cheapest way to get a sample into their database. Obviously it can be upgraded more, however generally if you can afford to start with 37 STR's I would go for that. The main issue that will arise of course if you belong to a large Y-DNA haplogroup. In which case you might have a large number of matches at 37 STR's which aren't quite close.

I have the reverse problem myself. At 37 STR's I only have about half-dozen matches, all of them either carrying varitions of my surname or carry another surname which could be possible 'direct angliscation' of original irish language name. The low level of matches carries through to 67/111 and BiGY testing. This is reflective that my own paternal lineage belongs to a line that was obviously quite small.

In comparison I've seen individuals with over 1,000 matches at 37/67/111 STR's. In their case they belonged to R-M222 (or one of it's branches), which is perhaps the single biggest lineage found in the northern half of Ireland. (and proposed as potential lineage of the Dál Cuinn), in cases of people who belong to massive lineages it's recommended to eventually upgrade to BigY (prefably at time of a sale).

Obviously the tests offered by FTDNA are supersets of each other. So for example one can always:

Upgrade Y-37 to Y111
Upgrade Y-37 to BigY-700
Upgrade Y-111 to BigY-700
etc.

The next level of testing been a superset of previous with BigY-700 been the most comprehensive (as it actually sequences most of Y-Chromosome discovering new mutations in the process).

I'd recommend starting at low base and then subsequently consider upgrades, and I would always recommend that people avail of regular sales to reduce cost of upgrades.

bluezulu49 · 07-03-2021 3:24pm

pinkypinky wrote: »

I think you would have to provide a new DNA sample for them to do the Y test but would really not advise Y12. You won't get anything useful from that - the minimum recommended is Y37 and even that is fairly unhelpful. As an indicator, I've got 3 Y37 tests on family members and have yet to find a single person in any of them with the same surname or make any concrete connection to anyone who is a match. There are not enough Irish people in the database yet.

I did a Y37 dna test with FTDNA and although I have matches, there are none with my surname and my closest match predicts our most recent common ancestor as 24 generations ago. This test might benefit me in the future but for the moment it appears to have been a waste of money.

Interestingly they were not able / willing to connect the Ydna test with my autosomal dna test, even though I had the former done as an ugrade to the latter.

srmf5 · 07-03-2021 5:52pm

Everyone's luck will vary. My dad has 45 Y-37 surname matches. He has 40 Big Y surname matches. I suppose an idea would be to check if there is an FTDNA surname project and if it's public to get an idea of the number of testers and the likelihood of getting matches. The surname project is public for my dad and I was able to see the group that I suspected he would fall in before even testing. How common your surname is might have a part to play.

silliussoddius · 07-03-2021 6:41pm

bluezulu49 wrote: »

I did a Y37 dna test with FTDNA and although I have matches, there are none with my surname and my closest match predicts our most recent common ancestor as 24 generations ago. This test might benefit me in the future but for the moment it appears to have been a waste of money.

Interestingly they were not able / willing to connect the Ydna test with my autosomal dna test, even though I had the former done as an ugrade to the latter.

It can depend on your Y haplogroup, of course. The majority of Irish men fall under groups with large numbers due to a growth of the ruling elite and hereditary rules from back in the day.
I fall under haplogroup I and have about six Y matches. Most have a Scottish equivalent of my surname and points to either plantation or right before plantation ancestry on the male side.

paddysdream · 16-03-2021 1:20am

Presume this is the correct thread for this.

Has anyone ever looked at how much DNA they seem to have from each of the different sides of their family lines ?
Know this is perhaps not a scientific method of doing things but my own matches seem to heavily weigh to a couple of particular lines regarding the amount shared with relatives of equal distance.
Discount number of matches as this can be biased if a family was large or small and in most cases a family line with a lot of US emigration will usually have more people tested on average.

This came to mind recently when a new match appeared on Ancestry for a 2nd cousin once removed .They happen to be on my fathers paternal side ,on which I have very few matches for that are placeable in my tree .

With this person (female)I share 39cM whilst with another person (male ) exact same relationship on his mothers side I share 185cM. Both people in question are grandchildren of 1st cousins of my father ,the first relationship through a sister to his own father (my grandfather) and the second through a brother to his mother (my grandmother).
Does the sex of the people involved have any bearing on all this ?

Looking at my matches some family sides show much stronger matches than others with known 3rd cousins varying from 195cM back to 23cM .
Have discounted being doubly related to people in this as in many of the cases they are either in USA or Australia and their tree indicates no connection to Ireland or in particular any area or name that might raise this possibility.

Again not too scientific but when you hear "well he takes after his grandfather/grandmothers side "or "he's a real Murphy/Byrne/Doyle/Smith etc etc " wonder if that follows through to shared DNA amounts.

dubhthach · 16-03-2021 10:52am

so useful table:

Relationship Average % DNA Shared Range [1]
Identical Twin 100% N/A
Parent / Child/ Full Sibling 50% Varies by specific relationship
Grandparent / Grandchild / Aunt / Uncle /Niece / Nephew /Half Sibling 25% Varies by specific relationship
1st Cousin 12.5% 7.31% - 13.8%
1st Cousin once removed 6.25% 3.3% - 8.51%
2nd Cousin 3.13% 2.85% - 5.04%
2nd Cousin once removed 1.5% 0.57% - 2.54%
3rd Cousin 0.78% 0.3% - 2.0%
4th Cousin 0.20% 0.07% - 0.5%
5th Cousin 0.05% Variable
6th Cousin 0.01% Variable

So when you get down to second cousin etc.

So once ye down at '2nd cousin once removed' it's quite a broad range, but ye looking at tops of 2.5% shared DNA.

This is because the process of Meiosis that produces gametes (Egg's/Sperm) results in genetic recombination, basically your 46 Chromosomes (other than your Y-Chromosome if you're male) do not fully match chromosomes seen in your parents.

Instead each Chromosome is an amalgam of two of your parents chromosomes.

When it comes to the pair of sex chromosomes (X and Y) this is more complicated. The Y-Chromosome basically can't recombine with X (outside of very small regions on edge), as that would risk the loss of genes that encode for genetic maleness. As a result a daughter will basically inherit an unchanged X chromosome from her father, but the X she gets from her mother can be made up of variable mixture of mother's two X's

In case of a son, the Y-Chromosome is basically identical to father's (except if new SNP mutations arise in utero) but the X he has is mix of both his mothers. As a result two brothers could have quite varaible shared DNA on their X.

As a result you will have people who can be proven to be say 3rd cousins via standard genealogy but with whom you share variable amounts of DNA with. It's completely posisble to be genealogically related to someone but not share any DNA (as the process of recombination has filtered out over generations what would be shared). This is why autosomal tests (23andme/Ancestry etc.) are only really useful finding matches with time of divergence of a maximum of 200 years.

In comparison if you had two males with proven written genealogy showing they were 8th cousins (on male line with same surname), they should match on Y-Chromosome even though they share 0% autosomal connection (in all probability given distant cousin marriage they probably share more recent connections on autosomal DNA from lines other than their direct paternal lineage)

pinkypinky · 16-03-2021 11:51am

paddysdream wrote: »

With this person (female)I share 39cM whilst with another person (male ) exact same relationship on his mothers side I share 185cM. Both people in question are grandchildren of 1st cousins of my father ,the first relationship through a sister to his own father (my grandfather) and the second through a brother to his mother (my grandmother).

Does the sex of the people involved have any bearing on all this ?

To add to Dubhthach's excellent response, the gender of the people should not have any bearing for autosomal DNA share.

The range is enormous.

I really like the tool on DNApainter.com where you put in a number and it gives you the full range of probability.

I saw confirmed second cousins share just 32cM earlier this year.

silliussoddius · 17-03-2021 6:35pm

paddysdream wrote: »

Presume this is the correct thread for this.

Has anyone ever looked at how much DNA they seem to have from each of the different sides of their family lines ?
Know this is perhaps not a scientific method of doing things but my own matches seem to heavily weigh to a couple of particular lines regarding the amount shared with relatives of equal distance.
Discount number of matches as this can be biased if a family was large or small and in most cases a family line with a lot of US emigration will usually have more people tested on average.

This came to mind recently when a new match appeared on Ancestry for a 2nd cousin once removed .They happen to be on my fathers paternal side ,on which I have very few matches for that are placeable in my tree .

With this person (female)I share 39cM whilst with another person (male ) exact same relationship on his mothers side I share 185cM. Both people in question are grandchildren of 1st cousins of my father ,the first relationship through a sister to his own father (my grandfather) and the second through a brother to his mother (my grandmother).
Does the sex of the people involved have any bearing on all this ?

Looking at my matches some family sides show much stronger matches than others with known 3rd cousins varying from 195cM back to 23cM .
Have discounted being doubly related to people in this as in many of the cases they are either in USA or Australia and their tree indicates no connection to Ireland or in particular any area or name that might raise this possibility.

Again not too scientific but when you hear "well he takes after his grandfather/grandmothers side "or "he's a real Murphy/Byrne/Doyle/Smith etc etc " wonder if that follows through to shared DNA amounts.

I'm getting a weird result at gedmatch when I use their feature to see what mutual matches I share with a person.
So I plug in my id and the other relative who gedmatch estimate to be 4.7 generations out. She matches my Uncle, but not my first cousin and second cousin who are related to me via my grandmother (Uncle's mother). But those two cousins then show up as close as you'd expect with my Uncle.
I suspect this may be an issue with gedmatch's algorithm/variances between testing companies raw data.

Also does anyone know what sharing one very large segment with a person may indicate? I have a new match at 23andme where I have one shared segment of 0.81%, I think I read in the past that this is called runs of homozygosity and may be signs of pedigree collapse.

Nqp15hhu · 19-03-2021 12:53pm

Is there much if any differences in Commercial autosomal DNA results across the regions of ROI?

For example, I noted most of my Donegal matches are 90%+ Irish on AncestryDNA. Would this be replicated across the rest of the island or are there disparities in the average ethnic values by region?

For example, would the average person from Kerry have a different percentage of Irish to someone from Louth? Or are most Irish people fairly uniform?

Hermy · 19-03-2021 2:55pm

Can we please keep the DNA queries to the dedicated thread.

pinkypinky · 19-03-2021 5:04pm

Nqp15hhu wrote: »

Is there much if any differences in Commercial autosomal DNA results across the regions of ROI?

For example, I noted most of my Donegal matches are 90%+ Irish on AncestryDNA. Would this be replicated across the rest of the island or are there disparities in the average ethnic values by region?

For example, would the average person from Kerry have a different percentage of Irish to someone from Louth? Or are most Irish people fairly uniform?

It's not really possible to make generalisations at this level, but I would say that I have seen people from the west having a higher percentage Irish than people from elsewhere, that I know of.

However, keep in mind that ethnicity is a just a guide and cannot be relied on beyond continental level at this stage.

dubhthach · 21-03-2021 11:24am

My mother is from Clare, she got 100% 'Irish' in Ancestry (with various North Munster "genetic communities")

My late father shows up as:

Ireland: 89% ("Tyrone, Derry, Antrim" + "South Derry, East Antrim" communities)
9% Scottish
2% Welsh

I'm from Galway and show up as 97% "Ireland" (various North Munster communities) and 3% Scottish.

For context my Dad was from Athlone, his father was from Belfast (with a "Liverpool Irish" mother) and his mother from East Galway/South Roscommon (whose mother's parents were from Cork/Kilkenny)

As these tests are really only good back to 200 years ye only really seeing a snapshot of general Irish population in the recent past. eg. their 'Ireland component' is reflective of general Irish population over the last 200 years.

mindhorn · 30-05-2021 6:39pm

I have a couple of spare kits I picked up from Ancestry and some of my family are thinking about using them. When I submitted my DNA for analysis last year, I wasn't too concerned as the pros outweighed the cons for me personally. But I don't want to force anyone to send it off for analysis. Any good summary of the pros and cons I could point them towards?

I plan to use the same sites I currently use, and for genealogical purposes only, not health etc; Ancestry, FTDNA, MyHeritage, LivingDNA and Gedmatch.

A New earth · 03-06-2021 9:54pm

https://whoareyoumadeof.com/blog/what-are-the-pros-and-cons-of-genetic-testing-for-ancestry/#:~:text=%20What%20are%20the%20Pros%20and%20Cons%20of,post%20helped%20you%20understand%20a%20little...%20More%20

L1011 · 03-06-2021 10:01pm

So I did the Ancestry standard test last year on offer; and have also exported it to FTDNA. Got through a few minor walls, but I'd be interested in seeing what else could be done.

My sister (definitely) and mother (probably, she has a habit of changing her mind!)) are willing to do tests - is there a good reason to pick one over the other if I buy a single test - and should I use Ancestry or FTDNA or someone else?

I have a cousin, from the male line on my mothers side, that might be willing too but he doesn't live as nearby as my mother or sister - I'm fairly sure that would be quite a lot more interesting though!

Hermy · 03-06-2021 10:36pm

If you choose Ancestry, as well as them having the largest DNA database, you can then upload your Ancestry results to other sites such as FT-DNA for free, whereas if you go with one of the other sites you can't upload their results to Ancestry.

A New earth · 03-06-2021 10:49pm

The main sites you can upload to are FTDNA which you have done plus Gedmatch and Myheritage. The basic for each of those two are free but you can upgrade if you wish. There are others but I don't think you would get much from them.

Yes Ancestry is the best test to do for the reasons given. 23andme is another one that does not allow you to upload to but they do not have as big a database as Ancestry and they do not link into family trees like Ancestry does.

spurious · 03-06-2021 11:02pm

L1011 wrote: »

My sister (definitely) and mother (probably, she has a habit of changing her mind!)) are willing to do tests - is there a good reason to pick one over the other if I buy a single test - and should I use Ancestry or FTDNA or someone else?

Test your mother, if it has to be one or the other.
That will let you isolate matches on your father's side, though the further you go back, particularly if it's an all-Irish scenario, the likelihood of some connections between the two sides becomes stronger.

Mick Tator · 04-06-2021 9:36am

L1011 wrote: »

S.................... - and should I use Ancestry or FTDNA or someone else? .............

The New York Times did a comprehensive study of DNS tests last autumn and published the results .Ancestry's came out tops, 23andMe was runner-up.

Both probably are skewed to US results, but I've found the same rate of success for Ireland, Ancestry has - by far - been my most productive and MyHeritage the worst.

bellaf · 05-06-2021 9:20am

Another thing to consider is ease of use of the test. Elderly people might find it hard to get enough saliva into the tube - I know my mother did. Ancestry and 23andme use the tube method whereas FTDNA and My heritage use "lollipops". I bought an Ancestry test late last year because of the recommendations here, as I was trying to sort out a puzzle. It came through in January and I was very very disappointed. I only have 234 matches compared to 5193 on FTDNA and 17,000 on My Heritage. I realise my problem with Ancestry is because of their new cut-off rules and maybe my case in an oddity. I find it very frustrating though because I know a lot of my FTDNA and MyHeritage matches are on Ancestry but simply don't show up. I got further with just putting my tree up on Ancestry than with the DNA.
I hope this helps.

pinkypinky · 05-06-2021 6:44pm

I'd say you only have 234 closer than 4th cousin matches on Ancestry - that's the headline they show on the front DNA page.

If you use their dropdown options for shared DNA, you can see how many matches in total.

I just did a quick check of a few kits I manage:

mine: 15690
Others were: 16563, 18618, 16591.

bellaf · 06-06-2021 9:08am

Thanks for the pointer Pinky and sorry for confusing the matter. I actually have 14,679 matches on Ancestry not 234!

paddysdream · 16-06-2021 12:18pm

Has anyone with Ancestry DNA done the "do you recognise them etc. " thing ?

It came up with my match list a couple of days ago.Looking at it last night and done some known matches for 3 different tests I manage .
In most instances the suggested relationship was inaccurate .It gives the 4 most likely and in very few cases were they the correct ones .Found that it was over optimistic with shared DNA amounts .For example actual 3rd cousins were usually suggested as being 2nd cousins or once removed 2nd cousins .Found that as I went down the list to say 30cM shared the most likely answer as suggested by Ancestry seemed to be slightly more accurate .
Also found that a parents test results seemed to be more in line with Ancestry logarithm than either my wife's or my own .

pinkypinky · 16-06-2021 9:11pm

I've just seen this for the first time today.

You need to understand that DNA shared can be a range of relationships and it's suggesting the most likely based on their experience.
Actually telling it what the correct relationship is should help them improve their predictions.

Mick Tator · 16-06-2021 11:56pm

I've gone quite far down the list using 'shared matches' as I can separate the lines quite easily as I've tests from both sides. When I can actually get closer than father's or mother's side I do so, but too many are too far back to be specific. Hopefully it will help them improve their algorithms.

DNA Analysis

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