Unlike Y-line and mtDNA testing where the DNA of the father or mother is passed to the offspring unmixed with that of the other parent, autosomal testing tests portions of the DNA of an individual that they receive from both parents. As the field of genetic genealogy has moved forward, research has begun to indicate that certain markers are found in higher or lower amounts in different ethnic populations.
For example, if someone has the Duffy Null allele, or genetic marker, we know they positively have African admixture. We don’t know how much African admixture, or from which line, or when that individual with African admixture entered their family tree, but we know for sure they existed.
Attempting to determine the population frequency of varying markers and what that means relative to other populations is the key to this analysis. Few markers are simply present or absent in populations, but are found in varying frequencies.
Some populations are widely studied in the research literature, and others are virtually untouched. The process of compiling this information in a meaningful manner so that it can be analyzed is a formidable task, as the information is often found in nearly inaccessible academic and forensic research publications. It’s difficult to determine sometimes if the DNA analysis of 29 individuals in a small village in northern Italy is, for example, representative of that village as a whole, of northern Italy, or more broadly for all of Italy as a whole.
Is it representative of Italy today or Italy historically? These and other similar questions have to be answered fully before the data from autosomal testing can be useful and reliable. If the DNA tests being performed aren’t mtDNA or Y-line, then they are autosomal tests, meaning they are performed on the balance of the DNA contributed by both parents to an individual. Before we discuss the varying kinds of autosomal tests and what they mean, let’s take a look at the inheritance process and how it really works.
Inheritance
Everyone knows that you inherit half of your DNA from your mother and half from your father. While this is technically true, you don’t receive 25% of your DNA from each grandparent.
While each child does on the average receive 25% from each grandparent, the actual inheritance pattern varies much more than that and each sibling may receive far more, or less, than 25% of their markers from any grandparent.
We don’t understand today how inheritance traits are selected to be passed to children. Each parent receives 50% from each of his parents, but how this is combined and reduced to the “half” that is passed to each child is unknown.
Every individual has 2 chromosomes in each pair, one from each parent, but their DNA recombines to create one “new” chromosome to be passed to each of their children. Some “groups” of genetic material are inherited together, and you may wind up with more or less genetic material from one of your grandparents. In time, certain genetic “traits” will be lost in some descendants, while not in others. Therefore, you can’t figure actual inheritance percentages by using the 50% rule. This means that if your father was 50% Native American, you are not necessarily 25%, genetically speaking. You may receive 10% of his Native genes and your sibling may receive 40%. Let’s use the Duffy Null allele we mentioned earlier as an example. This marker could have entered your DNA pedigree chart with a grandmother who carried the allele but had no obvious visible African ancestral traits, or from your father who might have been visibly African in ethnicity. The Duffy Null allele, which is just one marker, could have been passed in the inheritance of DNA for many generations, far after any visible physical African traits had disappeared, or it could be one of many African traits passed from parent to child. It is also possible that an individual who is admixed, whether they know it or not, and physically appears to be African (or of African descent), has lost the Duffy Null allele someplace along the line in recombination and transmission. The relevance of the Duffy Null allele is determined by the number of other “African” markers that appear in high quantity.
If there are few other African markers, then your African ancestry was likely further back in time. If there are many, then your African ancestry was likely more recent. These statistical calculations are how the importance of autosomal markers are determined and how percentages or estimates of ethnicity are calculated. Any one allele or marker can be lost permanently in any generation. Each child receives one gene from each parent.
In the example below, let’s say that the mother carried genetic markers A and B, and the father C and D, and D is the Duffy Null allele.
You can see that half the children received the D marker, but each inheritance event was a random recombination of the markers. It is also possible that none of the children would receive the D marker, or all of them would receive it. Statistically speaking, half will receive the marker, but statistics and individual inheritance are two different things.
Random recombination is the reason why siblings who take autosomal tests sometimes show significantly different results. You can also see how a marker that is very old ancestrally, meaning introduced many many generations ago, could be absent in one entire descendant line and present in another line. From the above examples, we see that we have two variables that we need to deal with when attempting to use autosomal DNA for genealogy. First, we need to take into consideration inheritance patterns which we can’t determine retrospectively without testing several descendant lines. So, in essence, we can only deal with, and test, what we personally carry today as our genetic inheritance.
The second variable is determining population frequency for a particular marker and understanding its significance to us through comparative population genetics. This is why autosomal testing can give us important hints, but is often considered “unreliable”. The results are highly subjective today, but increase in accuracy as more research is completed, compiled, published and analyzed.
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There are two types of autosomal test s used today for genetic genealogy. One type of test uses the Codis forensic markers and the second type, biogeographical tests, use a much broader spectrum of marker results called AIMs (Ancestry Informative Markers). Let’s look at both types of testing and the information they provide separately. Codis markers are a standardized set of autosomal markers used for paternity and siblingship testing. Additionally, they are used by police departments and forensics labs. The markers employed in these tests are selected specifically to differentiate between people in order to identify them individually, not to find common markers to place them in ethnic groups. The results from these tests are only numbers, and the recipient is often left to their own devices as to how to interpret the results. These tests are available from numerous sources. I prefer to interpret these results in conjunction with Y-line and mitochondrial DNA test results for as much of the genetic pedigree chart as can be provided in order to obtain a more complete genetic picture. Below is an example of what Codis test results look like. They are very similar from any lab.
Analysis of Codis Markers
Unless you’re using the Codis marker results to determine siblingship or some other personal reason, these numbers are fairly useless genealogically. It’s the analysis of these markers that matters. There are different avenues to analyze Codis results. None are “right” or “wrong”. DNAexplain (www.dnaexplain.com) provides analysis of these tests, along with broader more comprehensive analysis of genetic genealogy and what all of these tests together mean about you. We use a combination of resources, both public and private, including Omnipop and other European and Canadian autosomal forensic data bases. Tribes (www.dnatribes.com) has been compiling population data on these genetic markers for some years now and will compare your autosomal results with their data base. Take a look at their samples tab. Ironically, the results may vary significantly between these resources. There is no “right” or “wrong” answer at this point. I encourage everyone to simply view these results as “data”, hints to puzzle pieces. As the data bases improve and we better understand population migration and movement, the clarity of the results will improve too. Tribes early population tables did not include data from the British Isles, so their results were highly skewed towards other world populations. Omnipop today relies on self-reported ethnicity and does not include normalized data (or a normalizing factor) for varying populations. Because Tribes is a private company, we don’t know much about their population data, whether it’s widely representative of the world population distribution and whether it has been normalized or not.
To learn the most about your autosomal test results, you can take a dual approach, having them analyzed by Tribes as well as by DNAexplain using the other autosomal codis reference tools. We’ll be glad to help you through this process and provide a summary analysis of both. Testing for the Codis markers is available though Family Tree DNA and also through DNATribes. If you are purchasing this test from any other lab, be sure before you purchase the test that it includes the various markers needed for Omnipop and the DNATribes analysis. DNAPrint Genomics Biogeographical ancestry testing was previously available from DNA Print Genomics (www.dnaprint.com), however, they have now filed for bankruptcy and are out of business. However, biogeographical testing is the second type of autosomal testing and many people in the genealogy marketspace have taken this test. DNAPrint evaluated all of your genetic contributions for specific, proprietary markers that indicate geographical heritage, not just the Y-line or mtDNA. Results were returned as percentages of Indo-European, Asian, African and Native American. They did not use the Codis markers, but use, depending on your test selected, between 500 and 1349 biogeographical markers they had discovered to be relevant to ethnicity. This test itself was only available from only one source, DNAPrint, although the test was resold by several other companies under varying names. Results from this test were returned as percentages of ethnic heritage as shown below.
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Results were reported within confidence bands, which indicate a range of percentages that might actually be accurate. This is shown above by the bands surrounding the red dot which shows the “most likely” result. The margin of error is often as high as 15%. Typically, there is no dispute over the majority ancestral type. However, minority types are apparently much more difficult to discern. Because of the wide and sometimes surprising range of results, this test was often considered unreliable, but the degree of unreliability sometimes was determined by how pleased the tester was with their results.
It is unfortunate that DNAPrint is now defunct. While the test did indeed need refinement, without continuing research, there will never be a test to offer this type of information to consumers who seek answers otherwise unavailable to them.
Having said that, let’s talk about the concept of statistical noise, which in this case (DNAPrint) according to their documentation was as high as 15%. All testing that deals with statistics, which means by virtue of the nature of the beast, all population based autosomal tests today, deal with “statistical noise” at some level.
Statistical Noise
Statistical noise is easy to understand. It’s a scientific word that means the percentage of “slop” in the calculations based on what they don’t know. When scientists perform calculations based on populations, they have to sample an incredibly large number of individuals for the law of averages to work in their favor. For example, sampling 50 individuals from inner city Detroit may not be reflective of the entire state of Michigan’s population or even of the population of Detroit itself, depending on which neighborhood you’ve visited to collect samples. However, many companies base their entire estimates of heritage on 50 or fewer samples from particular countries. A much more reasonable and accurate approach would be to take samples from a percentage of people, based on population, throughout Michigan. That approach is difficult and expensive. To attempt to compensate for the issues inherent in the smaller sample approach, there are various calculations that are used on the results to “normalize” them. The resultant “unknown” or “margin of error” is considered statistical noise. It’s much like the political surveys taken that are always qualified by “+ or – a 5% margin of error”.
So what does this mean to genealogists trying to understand their results? What this means is that any number that you received could in actuality be 15% higher or lower than stated. For majority ancestry, this is not a problem, but for minority ancestry, which is the information most people are seeking, it represents a huge problem. Looking at the East-Asian and Native American results above, that means that they could actually be zero to 22% (East-Asian) or 17% (Native American).
Now let’s connect this to genealogy. If we use the figure of 50% inheritance in each generation, knowing that it’s imperfect because we don’t receive 25% of our genes from each grandparent, we know the following about our individual inheritance.
Parents – 50% from each one
Grandparents – 25% from each one
Great-grandparents – 12.5% from each one
Great-great-grandparents – 6.25% from each one
For most of us, average age of 50 (genealogists don’t tend to start young), and with an average generation length of 30 years, this equates to the following information:
Us –born about 1960
Parents – born about 1930
Grand-parents – born about 1900 (we probably knew them)
Great-grandparents – born about 1870 (we probably didn’t know them, but our grandparents and parents told us about them)
Great-grandparents – born about 1840 (we definitely didn’t know them, but we probably knew who they were genealogically as our grandparents knew them)
For most people, if our great-grandparents had been Asian, African or Native American, born about 1870, we would have known it. In this generation, we are within the statistical noise 15% ration as we only inherit (on the average) 12.5% from each of these individuals. If they were “full blooded” anything, it wouldn’t be a secret that needs to be ferreted out by DNA testing. By 1870, there were very few American Indian people who were not admixed with European or African ancestors, although they might have been unaware of that fact if it occurred several generations previously. Most of the least admixed individuals were on reservations by 1870 or living in the west. Indians living in the east were admixed enough to not have been removed in the 1830s. By the great-grandparents generation, we are now at the 6.25% level, well with the noise range, but within the timeframe where we should receive at least some oral history. The 1850 census is our friend here, as we can determine where they lived, if they were on a reservation, and if they were considered anything other than “white”, such as black or mulatto, as many admixed American Indians were labeled. Most people who seek to discover their Native American ancestry are by necessity looking back before the “Trail of Tears”, often to the tribes that were exterminated by the colonists before the Revolutionary War. Remnants of those tribes intermarried with whites and free people of color as well as joining the tribes still existent, such as the Cherokees and Creeks who were later removed. Unfortunately, on the genealogy chart, this takes us back another two generations to ancestors born in 1810 and in 1780. Respectively, we carry an average of 3.125% and 1.56% of their DNA. The next generation back, born in 1750 before the Revolutionary War, we carry less than 1%, on average, of their individual DNA. It’s no wonder that the autosomal tests have such a difficult time finding traces of our Native ancestors. Unfortunately, because of the way DNA is recombined and transmitted generation to generation, we simply can’t unlock those secrets to day. What we can do is to participate in new testing as it comes along and use the various pieces of information available from each type of test to build our “case”.
DNATribes
DNATribes has been a provider of products in the genetic genealogy field for several years. They use the Codis markers and provide an analysis from their data base relative to the markers and the populations in which they are found. They combine this population data into a trend and provide you with a report based on their findings as to which populations you are most likely to match. Considerations relevant to these results are mentioned above in the Statistical Noise section.
DNATribes products match you against the various world populations and report your most likely matches. An example is shown below.
Their reports begin at about $99 and they can also provide CODIS Marker testing if you have not been tested elsewhere.
D9S919 Autosomal Allele
From the halls of academia a paper was published a couple of years ago that indicated that about 30% of the Native Americans tested carry a certain value for this particular autosomal marker. These values are not known to occur in other populations. This makes this particular marker extremely useful in determining whether an individual carries Native American admixture.
A value of 9-10 confirms Native admixture, but a value of anything else does NOT disprove Native admixture.
This test is only available at Family Tree DNA for existing customers under Advanced Orders, Autosomal Markers, Panel 3, for $15 plus a transfer fee of about $10 if your DNA is not already in the Houston lab for advanced testing.
23andMe Ancestry Testing
A recent entry into the field of consumer genetic testing is the firm 23andMe, owned by the wife of Google’s founder. They are focused on testing that is not just for ancestry, but includes a significant amount of medical information. This is not equivalent to genetic genealogy testing, as there is no matching with others by surname, projects and etc.
What this does offer is a much wider range of tests on 580,000 locations on your genome. Today, you can’t separate out the medical and ancestry testing, so if you don’t want the medical, you’re getting it anyway. Take a look at their website at www.23andme.com for details. The price is about $400.
In addition to your Y-Line haplogroup (for males) and your mtDNA haplogroup, they also provide consumers with an estimation of their percentage of ancestry, although they only include European, Asian and African, and their sample size is small, in many cases about 50 individuals per population, which I feel is much too small to be reliable.
They recently introduced a feature called Native Ancestry Finder that evaluates your mtDNA and Y-line haplogroups, plus your percent of Asian heritage and tells you whether or not you’re likely to have Native Ancestry. In my case, it says I’m unlikely, but that it’s possible beyond 5 generations. Given my finding at their lab of 99% European and less than 1% Asian, they’re not incorrect, but their evaluation adds nothing that I didn’t already know from other sources. Their results are the lowest for Native/Asian/African admixture of all of the testing companies.
Having said that, here is an example of the ancestry results.
DeCode Genetics
Another entrant into the same arena, about the same time, is DeCode Genetics from Iceland with their deCodeMe product offering. DeCode Genetics is a well known biomedical company for their research into heart disease and related genetics. Unfortunately, with the Icelandic government’s collapse following the banking industry crisis, deCode Genetics is now in bankruptcy, but is still functioning. You can see their products at www.decodeme.com.
The ancestry portion of their offering is only available if you purchase the entire testing package, which costs $985. Their package is similar to 23andMe in that they offer primarily medical testing.
Here are examples of their ancestry results. Of interest, they display the entire X chromosome which 23andMe does not. In my case, this is a critical piece of information as my “Asian” ancestry is pronounced on the X chromosome. The X chromosome has a particular inheritance pattern and this limits the possibility of who, on my pedigree chart, contributed that “Asian” DNA substantially.
Summary
There are only two tests that can provide you with solid evidence of the source of your Native American or other ethnic ancestry. Those are Y-line and mitochondrial DNA tests. It’s important to try to fill in the blanks in your family tree pedigree chart by testing relatives who carry the Y-line and/or mtDNA of the lines of your tree that you cannot personally be tested for. It’s also important to test at Family Tree DNA, because they provide SNP testing for accurate haplotype identification for both mtDNA (free) and Y-line (if it cannot be accurately predicted based on identical matches to SNP tested individuals). Additionally they provide surname, geographic and haplogroup projects and customer support (by a qualified person) by phone or e-mail if needed.
In addition, two types of autosomal testing can provide useful clues as to the percentage of your ethnic heritage and the geographical source. DNAPrint provided percentages of ethnicity of the 4 major world groups, European, Asian, African and Native American, but they are no longer in business. DeCodeMe and 23andMe provide something slightly similar in their predictions, but neither test for Native ancestry. People of European descent must allow Asian heritage to infer Native Ancestry.
Codis marker testing is another type of autosomal test used to determine the Codis marker values which in turn can be used to map those marker values against known population groups. OmniPop is a tool that is used to view population matches, although issues persist relative to the identification of individuals and populations used by OmniPop and other tests of this type. DNATribes provides a population matching service using their internal database.
D9S919, an autosomal allele, can be tested through Family Tree DNA who also provides Codis marker testing. The values of 9-10 can confirm Native ancestry, but other values do not eliminate the possibility.
DNAexplain provides autosomal analysis services for Omnipop and other public databases in addition to analysis services for Y-line and mtDNA test results.
All genetic genealogy results need to be accompanied by genealogical research to unravel the historical context for the lives and trials of our ancestors. DNA testing may well answer the question what and who, but the why is typically revealed only by studying the history of the times in which they lived.
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Unlike Y-line and mtDNA testing where the DNA of the father or mother is passed to the offspring unmixed with that of the other parent, autosomal testing tests portions of the DNA of an individual that they receive from both parents. As the field of genetic genealogy has moved forward, research has begun to indicate that certain markers are found in higher or lower amounts in different ethnic populations.
For example, if someone has the Duffy Null allele, or genetic marker, we know they positively have African admixture. We don’t know how much African admixture, or from which line, or when that individual with African admixture entered their family tree, but we know for sure they existed.
Njii - We already have many people on the forum, whose only ability is to post material that they haven't read and don't understand.
Here is the actual study:
Please read it, and then explain why it doesn't say what you say, it say's.
THIS LINK EXPLAINS WHY YOU DON'T WANT TO HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH 23andME .
quote:Originally posted by Narmerthoth:
Warned you a long time ago that ES is a Jew owned and controlled site. Jews own and control these sites in order for them to have control of information. Although they claim to not be white, there is no doubt they are the same class of albino as their Gentile counterparts. ALL major internet sites are under Jew control. This is why they supported the 1960s US Civil rights agenda. It enabled them to loose laws which allowed them to take control of world wide media and control the flow and access to information. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google, Yahoo, CNN, are all Jew controlled, monitored by the ADL and censored. ES is too, which is why the Negro fake Ausar began heavy censoring last year, to appease his Zionist masters.
THIS LINK EXPLAINS WHY YOU DON'T WANT TO HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH 23andME .
quote:Originally posted by Narmerthoth:
Warned you a long time ago that ES is a Jew owned and controlled site. Jews own and control these sites in order for them to have control of information. Although they claim to not be white, there is no doubt they are the same class of albino as their Gentile counterparts. ALL major internet sites are under Jew control. This is why they supported the 1960s US Civil rights agenda. It enabled them to loose laws which allowed them to take control of world wide media and control the flow and access to information. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google, Yahoo, CNN, are all Jew controlled, monitored by the ADL and censored. ES is too, which is why the Negro fake Ausar began heavy censoring last year, to appease his Zionist masters.
I disagree with the notion that Race cannot be determined by DNA. This is a ridiculous assumption because we can clearly determine ancestry by DNA(parents grandparents etc.)
My point here is that white supremacists LIE about and mis-categorize the results in these DNA studies.
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Unlike Y-line and mtDNA testing where the DNA of the father or mother is passed to the offspring unmixed with that of the other parent, autosomal testing tests portions of the DNA of an individual that they receive from both parents. As the field of genetic genealogy has moved forward, research has begun to indicate that certain markers are found in higher or lower amounts in different ethnic populations.
For example, if someone has the Duffy Null allele, or genetic marker, we know they positively have African admixture. We don’t know how much African admixture, or from which line, or when that individual with African admixture entered their family tree, but we know for sure they existed.
Njii - We already have many people on the forum, whose only ability is to post material that they haven't read and don't understand.
Here is the actual study:
Please read it, and then explain why it doesn't say what you say, it say's.
I would have never posted this report if I had not read it multiple times and found it interesting. You need to stop assuming things that you don't know.
I am not saying that I necessarily agree with everything posted in this report, I am just trying to show that autosomal test results are not reliable because of the relatively large margin of error, the false archeogenetics assumptions within the analysis of racial mixture and the huge amount of statistical noise that convolute the data more than anything else.
I am a follower of the genetics methodology of Clyde Winters and I do not agree with the insane assumption that most African Americans are not African. The people who believe this are mentally ill and don't know a thing about archeology or genetics. I reject the Aryan model of historical analysis and prefer more rigorous models of science and research.
If most white geneticists excepted the simple fact that African people have been in Europe and America for tens of thousands of years, these studies would become more clear.
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