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.  

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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).

AncestryDNA FINALLY introduces new "In Common With" feature, SHARED MATCHES

SOUND THE ALARMS! RING THE BELLS! RAISE THE SALES! ALERT! ALERT! ... AncestryDNA (Ancestry.com) has just released a new In Common With (ICW) feature aptly titled, SHARED MATCHES, which shows a list of your DNA matches that you and another DNA match share in common, meaning somewhere there is a common ancestor.  If you and your parent tested there is also the MOM/DAD FILTER where you can view your DNA match list by either parent's side. We in the genosphere have been waiting, longing, yearning, and praying for this tool. Before this we didn't know where or how our [unknown] genetic relatives were related to us and each other. We had the arduous task of convincing our DNA matches to upload to Gedmatch.com in order to triangulate, and it's been extremely frustrating to say the least. AncestryDNA had indicated it would not make an ICW feature available. Back on November 3, 2014, AncestryDNA product manager Anne Swayne blogged about other new features in the works and then later the company released New Ancestry Discoveries ("a technical innovation that combines the latest in genetic science, new patent-pending algorithms, and access to AncestryDNA’s extensive database to push the boundaries of human genetics") and DNA Circles ("which brings together a group of individuals who all have the same ancestor in their family trees and where each member shares DNA with at least one other individual in the circle"). However these new features were controversial because they relied on other AncestryDNA customers' family tree information instead of actual shared DNA. Now AncestryDNA has answered our cries, yodels, screams. Since the SHARED MATCHES feature is so new, AncestryDNA did not send out any "official" e-mails and is apparently still tweaking it; for example all of the common matches I share with known family AND my twin kit (I took a second test) did not show up. But I'm very confident this will change soon. Again thank you AncestryDNA. 

Now let's see how it works and where to find the feature:
According to AncestryDNA, "The shared matches list shows DNA matches that you and one of your DNA matches have in common. This might help you determine which family line you share or give you more evidence that you’re related to a specific person or match. For example, if you and your brother share DNA with a cousin, that cousin will show up as a shared match for both of you. Similarly, if you have a DNA match and your 2nd cousin has the same DNA match, this person would be a shared match to you and your 2nd cousin—and may help you determine how you’re related to this 2nd cousin." You can read the rest here:

So how do you find the new SHARED MATCHES list feature? Here are easy instructions: 

Step 1. On your Ancestry.com homepage, click on the "DNA" tab:

Step 2. On your DNA homepage, click on "VIEW ALL DNA MATCHES":

Step 3. Once your DNA matches load, then click on any of your matches (I chose my twin kit, King Genome):

Step 4. Once you click on your match, there will be a link "SHARED MATCHES" (located right under match's profile name and Ethnicity Results):

Step 5. The next page will show your shared matches to the DNA profile you selected (As you can see below, I share two pages of matches with my twin kit. Of course I should share all 27 pages but this is an indication the feature is still being worked on):

And there you have it! Happy Hunting!

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PBS "First Peoples" (All 5 Episodes)

A great new documentary series from PBS investigating arrival of first humans in Africa, Americas, Asia, Australia & Europe. Based on the latest Archaeology and DNA research, this is must-watch TV. Premieres Wednesday, June 24, 2015 at 9/8c.  (See links to all five episodes/videos below)

FULL EPISODES (5):

1) First Peoples: AFRICA

2) First Peoples: AMERICAS

3) First Peoples: ASIA

4) First Peoples: AUSTRALIA

5) First Peoples: EUROPE

TribeCode's Newest Features ... Check it out...

Just sharing new DNA company TribeCode's recent announcements on Facebook ... Yes they are actually listening to their customers! ... Enjoy...

1. New MELTING POT TIMELINE 

From FaceBook: Hey TribeCode Facebook fans! We have just released a new feature, Melting Pot Timeline (6/17/15) 
Melting Pot Timeline reveals even more detail about your ancestry by unlocking the admixture within each population of your ethnicity composition. Using sophisticated data analysis algorithms, Melting Pot Timeline maps the expansion of founding populations from about 1300 BCE to 1900 CE to uncover their contribution to admixture around the world.

By selecting a population in your ethnicity composition pie chart, you will see the admixture within that specific population as well as any historical event during the same time period that would have influenced populations to migrate.

To access Melting Pot Timeline, hover your cursor over Experimental Features within the My Ancestry drop-down menu and select Melting Pot Timeline. Select the DNA or question mark icons for details on how to navigate the feature and interpret the results.

Questions or Feedback? Send us an email to customersupport@tribecode.com.

2. Hello GERMANY, and new European population update to TribeCode's Ethnicity Composition

From Facebook: ATTENTION TRIBECODE USERS: EXCITING UPDATE (May 20, 2014)
For the past few months, our team has been working hard to build upon our reference database to broaden the representation of global populations. We are very excited to share with you that we have expanded our reference data to include a more detailed characterization of European populations.

The additional reference data has been applied to every customer’s results and is reflected under the European Panel within Ethnicity Composition. This new panel has been added to give customers with high levels of European ancestry a more detailed and higher resolution view of their DNA ancestry. Specific populations referenced include German, Irish, Dutch and more.

Non-European ethnicity is shown as “Other” in this panel. For Non-European ancestry, you will see a more detailed view of your results on the Ethnicity Composition page.

We greatly appreciate your patience as we continue to build our reference data and improve our algorithms. We hope that this increases your satisfaction with your TribeCode results. For more detail on the European Panel, check out our latest post on Drum Beat! Please contact us if you have questions.