Coming Down the Ethnicity Admixture Pike

Source: http://www.nature.com/collections/vbqgtr

Fasten your seat-belts! The year 2016 reveals two of the major direct-to-consumer DNA companies — AncestryDNA ($99 US) and FamilyTreeDNA's FamilyFinder ($99 US) — will be updating their Autosomal DNA tests' ethnicity admixture tool and reference population clusters. AncestryDNA pleasantly surprised some of us with a temporary preview to its upgraded "Ethnicity Estimate" (now in BETA stage) shortly after announcing kits will available in 29 additional countries, while competitor FamilyTreeDNA promised a new version of its FamilyFinder "myOrigins" for the first quarter of this year at its 11th International Conference of Genetic Genealogy. I cover both offerings in this blog.

Let me tell you something! We've been thirsting hard for such updates, like waiting for admixture Godot stuck in a traffic jam of displeasure because our current results never quite stack up to our expectations and beliefs. Just four years ago our admixture estimates were infantile at best; our admixture was clumped into three to five broad continental-level categories. In rearview, AncestryDNA was first to market on October 17, 2013, with its finer-scale "Ethnicity Estimate" [see story here]. Soon after on November 19, 2013, 23andMe announced an update to its "Ancestry Composition" [see blog here]. And finally on May 6, 2014 FamilyTreeDNA introduced myOrigins, a make-over of its former admixture offering [see Roberta Estes blog here]. It's worth noting on August 10, 2015 National Genographic 2.0 updated its product with an overhaul of reference populations and "regional affinities" [see article here]. Currently 23andMe is caught up in a transition quagmire after winning FDA green-light to market health testing [see Estes' DNA-Xplained] so it's not clear when an upgrade to its "Ancestry Composition" (arguably the best admixture tool in show) will be released. Newcomer TribeCode hasn't announced a timeline for future changes to its Next Generation Sequencing-based "Ethnicity Composition" (which includes 62 reference population clusters). But before we sojourn on the long road ahead, we need to make a quick pitstop so I can gas your think-tanks up with some premium food for thought:

Sharing Your AncestryDNA Matches List with Other Members

If you're an AncestryDNA (from Ancestry.com) member, did you know that you can share your DNA MATCHES list (and full Ethnicity Estimate results) with other AncestryDNA members? And you can do it without giving up your log-in information? Chances are you didn't know, but that's cool. It's a real simple process and I'm going to show you how to do it.

BUT BEFORE YOU SHARE:

• Deciding to share your AncestryDNA matches with another Ancestry member either means you're a serious genealogist, very liberal-minded, have nothing to hide, or just wants someone else to do all the work for you (which case can be a blessing to some of us). In any case you must be comfortable with sharing your DNA MATCHES list. 
•  If you share your DNA MATCHES list with another AncestryDNA member, it means this AncestryDNA member can see your list of DNA matches. 
• You must receive a sharing invite from an AncestryDNA member in order to see that person's results. You don't automatically see their results when you share with them.
• None of your personal or account information will be shared with the AncestryDNA member(s) viewing your results.
• Nor will the AncestryDNA member be able to make changes to or hostilely take over your account, raw data, ethnicity estimate, family trees or DNA MATCHES list.
• You can stop sharing your DNA MATCHES with other members at any time.
• Relax. If you've uploaded your DNA results to GEDmatch.com then you can see the DNA matches of any kit on your own list. Nothing has happened, right?
• Sharing your DNA MATCHES works the same way as inviting someone to view your  Ancestry.com's Family Trees -- you invite AncestryDNA members to view your list by sending them a request by username or e-mail address. 
• You are the Administrator of your AncestryDNA account. You can ONLY invite another member in the role of "Guest" (invitee limited to viewing your DNA matches list) OR "Editor" (invitee can write/edit notes and "star" your DNA matches) as explained in this screen-shot:

Source: AncestryDNA

HOW TO SHARE YOUR DNA MATCHES LIST: 

(1) On your AncestryDNA Home page go to "SETTINGS" icon as seen here:

(2) Toward the bottom of your "Test Setting for..." page, you will see an "Invite others to access DNA results" button as shown here:  

(3) Once the "Invite others to access DNA results" page opens, you must: 

• put invitee's username or e-mail address in the "Email or Ancesty username" field;
• decide which role you want the invitee to have by choosing "Guest" (invitee can view your list only) or "Editor" (invitee can write/edit notes and star your matches) as shown here:

(4) After you've invited the member to view your DNA matches, AncestryDNA will send the member an e-mail to view your results. Once the Ancestry member accepts your invite he or she will be able to see your DNA MATCHES list (and full Ethnicity Estimate). 

• NOTE: If you're the recipient of an invite to share DNA matches (and you accept), then the AncestryDNA member's  kit name will appear in your "VIEW ANOTHER TEST" drop-down menu. To demonstrate, in the screen-shot below I [prevously] invited my [twin kit] KingGenome to share so the kit name appears on the drop-down list:

• If I click on my "KingGenome" kit, then it takes me to [my twin kit] King Genome's list of DNA matches, which I can happily explore: 

  

Good will hunting!

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The Stories I Tell: Finding Your Roots Review Special (Episode 3:1)

Welcome to the ROOTS section of my blog where I focus on general and personal genealogical subjects of my interest. Most of the time these blogs will be short digs where only limited research is performed. Last year I promised to join fellow bloggers covering the sensational "PBS Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr." In order to fulfill my covenant I'm using the next few "ROOTS" blogs to review this award-winning TV series in my creative way. Please join me, and enjoy: 

PBS Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr, Episode 1, Season 3 screenshot. Source: PBS.org

SEASON THREE'S premier of PBS Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr. (FYR) launched on January 5, 2016 (8pm EST) with outstanding success. After a harrowing delay due to Affleck-gate, FYR did not skip (no pun intended Dr. Skip Gates) a heartbeat with fantastic genealogical journeys into the pasts of political strategist Donna Brazile, actor Ty Burrel and artist Kara Walker. This particular FYR episode (view here) focused on each guest's "deep" family mysteries and discussed how slavery may have influenced their identities. Curiously FYR investigations utilized Autosomal DNA testing as in past seasons but opted NOT to include admixture analysis for its guests (perhaps forbidden fruit now because many of us (ab)use it to define our identities). Instead FYR turned to the more reliable DNA relative matching (DNA is not supposed to lie). However this minor shift in programming was majorly compensated by the illustrious stories we learned about Donna's unusual surname Brazile; Ty's free Black great-great-grandmother Susannah Weeks, who became a homesteader in Oregon, and Kara's emancipated great-great-great-grandfather Henry Fordham, a free man of color working for the Confederates during the US Civil War. Of course I've always longed to become famous or successful enough to be featured on FYR and handed a Book of Life. While I'm waiting my turn to sit across from Dr. Gates, I'll pacify the time by finding something on FYR that connects to one my relatives. 

Immediately after FYR's season opener aired I logged on AncestryDNA to research my family tree and to check for new genetic matches for myself and DNA-tested relatives with whom I'm sharing my DNA match list. Pay dirt...sort of. I discovered that Donna Brazile has something in common with one of my relatives -- the surname Brazil(e) and Braswell. It turns out that my relative's granduncle had a daughter whose maiden name was Brazil (variation of Brazile) by a woman with last name Braswell. To rewind, Donna discovered that her last name had originally been Braswell and earlier Bracewell.  FYR showed Donna's family living in Louisiana by way of her ancestor Della Braswell, who was born in North Carolina. Her Brazile ancestors were enslaved by a large slave-owning Brawell family that migrated from Virginia colony to the Tar Heel State; Dr. Gates says they all "descended from one man" Richard Bracewell of England. So I wanted to see if my relative's cousin with the Brazil surname underwent a similar transformation, and if there was evidence my relative cousin's Brazil ancestors enslaved by the same Braswell family that enslaved Donna's ancestors. Here's what I found out: 

Gedmatch's new SPREADSHEET feature

Gedmatch.com, the preeminent "third-party" site for genetic genealogy enthusiasts, now features a SPREADSHEET option when you run your Gedmatch kit number (ie M123456) through the Gedmatch admixture calculators (ie Dodecad). NOTE: The Spreadsheet does NOT represent your ethnicity admixture results so please refrain from using them for those purposes. This new Population Spreadsheet corresponds to your ORACLE results (a population-fitting program measuring your genetic distance to a set of chosen reference populations based upon your Gedmatch admixture calculator results) and is best described as a utility for examining the population structure of those ORACLE reference populations.  

Some of these reference populations, like most of us, contain genetic ancestry from "outside" populations and some of it may show up in our admixture for those very reasons. For example we may see a small amount of Siberian on our Dodecad World9 results and think it represents Native American when in actually it has something to do with our East African affinity. Huh?

Well the Spreadsheet may help us understand what Siberian would have to do with African by examining the population structures of the Oracles reference populations. In simple terms the Spreadsheet is like taking a person from one of  the reference populations used to represent an ethnicity category on Gedmatch's Oracles program and running that person's  kit number through the admixture calculators. Ultimately the Spreadsheet will help us make more practical inferences about why certain admixture is showing up our results.

In this blog I will show you how to use and interpret the Gedmatch Spreadsheet (in 4 steps):


(1) Assuming you've run your Gedmatch kit number through an admixture calculator (here I use Dodecad World9), simply click on the "Oracle" or "Oracle-4" button as shown here:

 (2) You need to see your Oracle results (below) first before you run the Spreadsheet feature. This is because you'll need to know which of the Oracle reference populations you match on the Population Spreadsheet. For example my Dodecad World9 Oracle results reveal I have genetic similarity to the Bantu NE (Northeast African Bantu). 

(3) Next return back to your Dodecad World9 results, and simply click on the "Spreadsheet" button as shown here:

(4) On the Population Spreadsheet for Dodecad World9 (below) you will get a list of Oracle reference populations' (vertical list) admixture contributions based upon the Gedmatch admixture calculator's "ethnicity" categories (horizontal list). Think Gedmatch calculator results for each reference population in the Oracle data set.

•  Let's look at the first population "Bantu NE" on the vertical list (second to last). As you can see this Bantu NE sample contained African (92.89%) AS WELL AS small amounts of admixture from Southern (6.31%; Eastern Mediterranean), South Asian (0.40%), Siberian (0.20%) and East Asian (0.10%). The smaller amounts of admixture could represent such introgressions of populations (ie Southern) with ancient admixture (ie Siberian) such as could happen with Arab-Islamic contact with Madagascar (the Malagasy population is roughly 50% Bantu South African and 50% Island Southeast Asia), see Capredon et al. The majority of the Bantu NE affinity comes from Africa (multiple subregions), which makes sense if we consider the population migration and dispersal of the Bantu population, and potential gene-flow from those events.  

• In application to my own results when I look at my Dodecad breakdown and see a strong affinity to Southern (Eastern Mediteranean), and corresponding Oracles program showing affinity to Bantu NE, I may hypothesize that the Southern percentage @ 5.51% may in part be the result of my affinity to Bantu NE shown in the Oracle program.This also means I have European, Siberian/Asian and African markers which look something like the Bantu NE's population structure and thus my higher genetic distance to them on the Oracle program. Further this could also mean I have ancestry from a Bantu population in East Africa, which also makes sense because I've known ancestry from Madagascar. So perhaps my Southern (East Mediterranean) and Siberian admixture percentages on Dodecad World 9 is because of my Bantu NE affinity instead of Native American as I priorly assumed. In context this may be compared to the Luhya-Kenya and Southwest Asian affinity showing on my National Genographic 2.0 admixture results, and thus lending more credence to my having ancestral origins with an East African Bantu population that may have been affected by Arab-Islamic introgression ... like my Malagasy relatives.  

#End#

FTDNA Holiday Sale 2015

Tis the season to be jolly for ... HOLIDAY SALES and FamilyTreeDNA is the first to light up with savings. See below for all of the great details. 

From Family Tree DNA:
"We're excited to announce the launch of our 2015 Holiday sale! It will start today at midnight and end on December 31st @ 11:59PM Central Time.
You'll find a full list of the sale prices on the FTDNA website. Similar to last year, we're adding a treat to this year's great deals – our Mystery Reward discounts! The Mystery Reward will be a randomized discount (up to $75 off) that can be applied on top of the already reduced Holiday Sale prices. You’ll get a new Mystery Reward every week as well as after making a purchase. You can use the discounts or share them with friends!

The Mystery Reward icon will appear on testers’ myFTDNA dashboard each week. Each code will expire the night before the next Mystery Reward appears. We’ll also send an email notification to the kit’s primary email address when a new code is available for use or sharing."

Holiday/End of Year Sale:

Family Finder - $89

Y37 - $139
Y67 - $228
Y111 - $309

Y37 -> 67 - $79
Y37 -> Y111 - $176
Y67- > Y111 Upgrade - $103

Big Y - $525

mtDNA - $69
mtDNA Full - $169

TYPES OF DNA TESTS SIMPLIFIED! (Videos & Visualization)

If you're a novice or new to DNA testing for genetic genealogy THE VERY FIRST THING you should do is review these five short videos created by the University of Utah. Each video is less than four minutes long and will help you immensely with an inaugural understanding of this complicated field. ALSO take a look at my visualization about the different types of DNA tests following these short videos from Genetic Science Learning Center's Learn Genetics series here. ... Enjoy:

3 TYPES OF DNA TESTS VISUALIZED

A lot of people know about genealogical DNA tests but have no idea there are three main tests to choose from that measure very different parts of your ancestry. So I edited two blog posts to add this screen-grab, which I altered with information to help explain the three different types of DNA tests available. What do you think? Does it makes things slightly easier to understand? If so, share this blog:

(Screen-grab from: http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/chromosomes/types4/. Boxed text added by TL Dixon)

• First, AUTOSOMAL-DNA* (atDNA) Test analyzes your 23 chromosomes to estimate your ethnic contributions inherited from your parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents,16 gg-grandparents, 32 ggg-grandparents, etc., and includes an estimate of your ethnic admixture broken down into percentages, as well as match you to real genetic relatives going back about 500 to 1000 years. 

• Second, MITOCHONDRIAL-DNA* (mtDNA) Test analyzes your cell’s mitochondria genetic code to determine your ancient maternal ancestry; you inherited your mtDNA exclusively from your mother and her direct fore-mothers going back tens of thousands of years to a common ancestral mother. Therefore the mtDNA test is used to determine your MATERNAL HAPLOGROUP ASSIGNMENT (an identifier for mutation(s) unique to your mtDNA organized on "Phylotree" according to an alphanumerical grouping system ie haplogroups B2 or L1b1a or U6a5b for example). 

• Third, the Y-CHROMOSOME DNA* (Y-DNA) Test, only available to males, analyzes his Y-chromosome to determine his ancient paternal lineage via his father and direct forefathers going back tens of thousands of years to a common ancestral father. Therefore the Y-DNA test is used to determine a male’s PATERNAL HAPLOGROUP ASSIGNMENT (identifiers for mutations unique to a male’s Y-chromosome organized on "Phylotree" according to an alphanumerical system ie haplogroups A0 or E-U290 or R1b1a2).

#END"

Kyle Winkey's Memorial Fund

I, TL Dixon set up this GoFundMe page in good faith to honor the memory of my 17-year-old first cousin, KYLE WINKEY, as well as to cherish his legacy, to remember the loving spirit that he was, and to help take care of us his younger brother, who will be starting this school year without his only sibling and best friend. On August 30, 2015 in Plainfield, NJ, Kyle was tragically taken away from us on the birthday of his father, who predeceased him in 2004. I must add that Kyle truly enjoyed learning about our ancestral heritage through my genetic genealogy talks with him. Although we have lost a loved one, we know we’ve gained a heavenly angel whose duty is now to guard over us. Our family is truly grateful for the overwhelming outpouring of love, kindness and support we have received thus far. The idea that so many of you want to keep Kyle's legacy alive touches our hearts and souls. In lieu of flowers, please consider helping us lay Kyle to rest and to help his mother with costs of sending his young brother to school this term. Kyle would love you all for it. You can make donations to the Kyle Winkey Memorial Fund OR through your own Paypal Account (please see "My Paypal" tab at the top of this blog page).