Native and African American Houses – University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Posted on September 15, 2012 by Roberta Estes

This week I was honored to speak at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. These speaking engagements were different than anything I’ve ever participated in. I’ve done quite a bit of university speaking, but generally conferences. These events were different because the students themselves from these two Houses invited me and funded my visit. To say I felt a great obligation to find a way to connect to them is an understatement.

Normally my audience consists of genealogists, and sometimes civic groups, but generally not young people ranging in age from 18 to 22 or so, plus grad students. These folks were born in the 1990s for the most part and ancient history to them is anything before cell phones. They were only about 10 years old when social networking in the form of My Space was launched, so they’ve never know a world without the internet, electronic gadgetry and social networking. I was extremely glad I had my two blogs to offer them.

I thought about how they might perceive DNA and genealogy, and I changed the presentation entirely, approaching it from a different perspective – that of personal genetics. While this new field started in 1999 as a genealogical endeavor (thank you Bennett Greenspan), it has moved far from its original genesis. Today we have a toolbox full of tools that can answer different questions for us, in various ways. For these bright young people full of potential, personal genetics will be with them their entire lives and it won’t be a frontier like it is for us, but a way of life. My presentation was entitled “The Gift of You” and it discussed genealogy of course, but deep ancestry, health, ethnicity and “cousinship” using fun examples. I also passed out candy when I got answers, which helped a lot:) Food, the most common denominator.

While all 4 sessions were sponsored by both the African American and Native American Houses, 2 sessions were held at the Bruce B. Nesbitt African American Cultural Center, 1 at the Native American House and the final presentation in a larger auditorium venue. All sessions were open to all students and the public as well, and indeed were attended by a wide variety of people with very interesting and diverse backgrounds.

I was particularly impressed with the regular luncheon, with speakers, held by the African American House, entitled “Food for the Soul.” I wish I lived close enough to attend as many of the topics are very interesting. This event was very well attended.

After each of the 4 sessions, several people stayed and discussed various aspects of genetic testing, genealogy and career paths.

I can’t even begin to express how hopeful this trip made me. These young people who attended these sessions are bright and forward thinkers. They are involved in supportive and nurturing programs through the two Houses as well as the academic curriculum at the University of Illinois. They are encouraged to reach beyond the known horizons. And yes, some of them are interested in genealogy too. I’m hopeful that there will be someone to pass that torch to someday!

I want to share with you a conversation I had with one young man who stayed after the session at the Native American House. He is mixed Caucasian, Peruvian, Chinese and Jewish, born in California, an extremely culturally diverse place. He is a graduate student in the Communications/Medical program meaning at the end of 8 long years, he comes out the other end with an MD degree and a PhD. And he is bright, very, very bright, compassionate and pleasant. I don’t know where he’s going to practice, but I want him to be my doctor!

He shared with me part of his story. Between his undergrad and graduate school, he embarked on a journey of discovery. He tracked his grandmother’s life backwards. He began at her grave in Israel, journeyed through China where they sought refuge from the holocaust, and where his grandmother’s mother died of a “female disease.” From there he went back to Germany where the family had escaped the holocaust. During this time he discovered that his mother and he both carry the BRCA1 gene which produces a hereditary breast-ovarian cancer syndrome. Another family member indeed has this disease today. His profound interest in his family history and this mutation led to a discussion about epigenetics and the ENCODE project which revealed that what was once considered to be junk DNA isn’t junk afterall. And then, the question:

“What if we could use epigenetics to turn OFF the BRCA1 gene?”

I told him, I’m way beyond my level of expertise, but the fact that this extremely talented young man is pondering this question, and has a very personal impetus to answer it is one of the most promising and hopeful events I’ve witnessed in a very long time. This truly is the gift of our ancestors, in so many unseen and unspoken ways.

The art at the beginning of this article, titled “Elevator”, by Sol Aquino, 2003 (acrylic on canvas) featured on the SACNAS brochure I picked up at the Native American House portrays this connection is a most profound way.

During these two days, I got to spend time with Rory James, the Director of the Bruce B. Nesbitt Center, and with Jamie Singson, the Director of the Native American House, and the staff and volunteer students at both facilities. I was extremely impressed with the knowledge of both of these gentlemen and their heartfelt concern for the students, their education and their futures. I know that these men and their staff will shepherd these students and provide them with ongoing opportunities to learn about their history and how it connects with their futures as they complete their more structured academic studies. I wish facilities like this had been in place when I was a student.

The attendees were extremely diverse, in terms of racial and cultural makeup, in terms of student versus community members, age, and in terms of their interests relative to personal genetics. Their stories were both amazing and inspirational.

I think that Jamie Singson summed it up perfectly at the end of the final session as we walked through the cool evening air back to the Native American House from the auditorium. People had stayed for an additional couple of hours after the presentation and a small group of about 5 of us had a very enlightening and lovely discussion. Jamie said, “What I take away from this is how much everyone wants to belong and to find the place where they fit in.”

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The DNA Pedigree Chart – Mining for Ancestors

Posted on August 22, 2012 by Roberta Estes

Judy Russell blogged a few days ago about counting up the number of ancestors you have found, of the total number available in the past 10 generations in her blog, “More Lost than Found.” Judy had a tidy total of 12% after the 10^th generation, counting your parents as generation 1. She has only been researching for 12 years. A veritable youngster. I’ve been researching for 34 years, so I was hopeful that my percentage would be somewhat better. At 1% per year, I should rack up about 34%. We’ll see.

In my presentations, I always talk to people about building their DNA pedigree chart. I use my own as an example. It took a lot of work, not to mention money and in some cases, some significant arm-twisting to accomplish this.

It pains me that there are blanks at the top, and some of them can never be filled. The one person who could test for the Ruthy Dodson Estes (Claiborne Co., Tn.) mitochondrial line, won’t. The Kirsch family has few male descendants here in the US, and so far, the only one I can find isn’t interested in testing.

With some heavy duty elbow-grease, I should be able to find someone to test for the Margaret Herrell Cook Bolton (Claiborne County, TN) and the Margaret Lentz Miller (Montgomery Co., OH and Elkhart Co., IN) lines.

Some lines are simply dead. The deJong line had no daughters and we don’t know who her parents were in the Netherlands, so we can’t go upstream. I can’t find Rachel Hill Lore’s daughter’s descendants from Warren County, Pa.

Instead, I focus on the 10 lines whose DNA I do have. I thought this was pretty good, actually. Of these 16 ancestors, I have the DNA of 10 of them.

Last week, when I read Judy’s article, I wondered exactly how my DNA pedigree chart would compare to the number of ancestors in total and the number found. I wouldn’t say this comparison has been fun, but it has been enlightening in a number of ways.

On the chart below, the generation is noted, the total number of end-of-line ancestors in that generation, the number of ancestors I’ve identified, the percentage that represents, followed by the number whose DNA I have and the percentage compared to the total number of ancestors possible. The percent would look a lot better if compared it with the number of ancestors identified….but that wouldn’t be playing quite fair.

Generation	Ancestors Total	Ancestors Identified	Percent IDed	DNA Anc	% DNA
1 – parents	2	2	100	2	100
2 – grandparents	4	4	100	4	100
3 – great-grandparents	8	8	100	7	88
4 – gg-grandparents	16	16	100	10	63
5 – ggg – grandparents	32	32	100	22	69
6 – gggg – grandparents	64	52 (6 women no surname)	87	20	31
7 – ggggg – grandparents	128	72 (5 women no surname)	56	19	15
8 – gggggg-grandparents	256	90 (7 women no surname)	35	21	8
9 – ggggggg-grandparents	512	106 (12 women no surname)	21	23	4
10 – gggggggg-grandparents	1024	101 (4 women no surname, 8 duplicate ancestors on Mom’s side)	10	25	2
Total	2046	483	24	153	7

I wound up doing an extra generation that Judy didn’t do.

So comparing my 9^th generation with Judy’s number, I had a total of 382 ancestors found out of 1022 possible, for 37%. At 1% per year, I’m three years ahead of schedule!

Expanding this number to the 10^th generation reduced my percentage to 24%, but still not bad for 300 years ago, or so.

So Judy, take heart, in another 22 years you’ll be up to 37%, about one third of the way there. It looks like one gains about 1% per year, so at this rate you’ll only need to live for another 88 years to be done. I can die when I’m only 119. I sure hope my retirement money holds out that long!

Finding Ancestors DNA

On the chart, the “DNA Anc” column heading means DNA ancestor’s located and the next column, “% DNA,” is the associated percentage. While significantly smaller than the number found, this information is still quite interesting for a number of reasons.

First, my pedigree collapse didn’t begin until the 10^th generation. On my Mom’s side, I have a lot of ethnic groups, for lack of a better term for them. I have the Brethren, the Acadians, the Dutch and other non-Brethren German immigrants, all of which lived in clusters and intermarried after arriving in the states. The pedigree collapse, where the same ancestor is found in your tree more than once, occurred in both the Acadian line and the immigrant non-Brethren German lines back in Germany.

In order to make sure I actually had gathered up all of my ancestral DNA lines that are available, I checked the projects at Family Tree DNA. Most of the projects are quite useful, but there were some exceptions. I’d like to make a plea for all surname administrators to please, PLEASE, enable the oldest ancestor field on your Family Tree DNA public webpages. Without that information, you can’t even begin to figure out if your line is represented and the page is virtually useless.

And folks who have tested, please, PLEASE, enter your oldest ancestor information with identifying data; birth, death, location and spouse would be good for starters. This means for the Y-line, your oldest paternal ancestor and for mtDNA, your oldest female maternal ancestor. You would be amazed how many men’s names I see in the oldest maternal ancestor field. This is your mitochondrial DNA lineage – your mother, her mother, her mother, etc on up the tree until you run out of mothers.

Aside from the surname projects, I found the French Heritage project, the Mother’s of Acadia project and the Acadian American Indian projects quite useful. For one thing, they had taken the time to enter relevant surnames into their project profiles, so when one of my surnames popped up, I knew to check their projects.

I had checked existing projects previously for all of my surnames, but quite a few more ancestral lines that I could readily identify as mine had been added since I last checked. In some cases, I couldn’t tell for sure, so I omitted those. Unfortunately, some surnames don’t have projects.

I decided to check Ysearch, although I really didn’t think it would be very productive. I was very pleasantly surprised. First, it’s a lot easier to search there, even with the captchas, because you can see the location. Then you can click on the User ID to see more genealogical info…hopefully. People tend to enter more when they are prompted and in Ysearch does that in the transfer or data entry process. I wish Family Tree DNA did more of this type of prompting on their website. The only thing I couldn’t see that would have been quite helpful was the oldest ancestor info without clicking on the User ID.

Surprisingly, I picked up several DNA lines from Ysearch. They fell into three categories. First, the unusual names that did not have projects at Family Tree DNA. Second, surnames from projects that were poorly displayed at Family Tree DNA, meaning the oldest ancestor info wasn’t shown, so one couldn’t tell if their family was represented or not. Third, surnames with many matches. It was easier to tell if there was a possible fit at Ysearch than in projects at Family Tree DNA. I compared a couple of surnames at both locations, and people do tend to enter more info at Ysearch than they do at Family Tree DNA in terms of the oldest ancestor.

On the other hand, searching at Ancestry was entirely futile. They do have an option to see if a surname has tested. If so, they show you the name of the person who tested and their haplogroups. Not useful. The only way to do anything more is to look at the profile of every person to see if their tree is connected or to contact them. Very, very not useful.

While checking projects for the paternal surnames at Family Tree DNA and at Ysearch was easy, looking for females who descended from my ancestors and who have tested was quite difficult. We need a mitochondrial DNA data base that has the maternal ancestors of everyone who has tested that we can search to see if our maternal line is represented. I think we’re missing a lot of opportunities by not having this functionality.

One thing that happened that I didn’t expect is that in each generation, I lost lines, but I also picked up other lines and sometimes, they had been DNA tested. By “picked up,” I mean that if we have a female marrying into the family, back one generation, we have her father. Some of those ancestral lines had been DNA tested. I expected that since many were quite far back in my tree, there wouldn’t be DNA lines for them, but that wasn’t the case as long as I had enough information to uniquely identify them and the correct end-of-line person. In other words, just having Nicholas Estes doesn’t cut it, but having Nicholas Ewstas born 1495, Deal, Kent, England, died 1533, same location, wife’s name Anny is clearly enough to identify this man.

Unfortunately, I have a lot of Dutch on my Mom’s side, and a few generations back, on my Dad’s as well. Relative to surnames, projects and DNA testing, Dutch lines tend to be rather hopeless, especially when you’re back to when surnames were being formed, unless you know someone from that line to ask to test.

The Dutch used patronymics where the father’s name was used plus an ending -zoon for sons, -dochter for daughters. For instance, Abel Janszoon Tasman is “Abel son of Jan Tasman”, or simply Abel Janszoon. In written form, these endings were often abbreviated as -sz. and -dr. respectively e.g. Jeroen Cornelisz. “Jeroen son of Cornelis”, or Dirck Jacobsz. Of course, the next generation would be Jan son of Dirk, or Jan Dirckszoon or Dircksz.

This means there was a different “surname” in every generation. In the village, everyone knew who you were, but outside the village….and beyond that century, it’s a nightmare. Patronymics were used in Holland until 1811, whereupon emperor Napoleon forced the Dutch to register and adopt a distinct surname. Often, they simply made the patronymics the new family names, and modern Dutch patronymic-based surnames such as Jansen, Pietersen and Willemsen abound. Others chose their profession or habitat as family names: Bakker (baker), Slachter (butcher), van Dijk (of dike) etc. But then, the spelling changed, within families and when immigrating. All of this, combined, makes finding Dutch ancestors very challenging and surname projects difficult.

Germans adopted surnames long before the Dutch, in most cases, so we find a few more that have projects and have tested. In my case, I often only have one or two generations here, at most, and then the line jumps overseas. Names are spelled differently and the European people don’t have the love affair with genetic genealogy that we Americans have. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that we are looking for our roots and they just look outside the window to see theirs.

The Pietistic faiths are difficult too. Many of the descendants still practice the faith, or if not, a very conservative related faith. It’s difficult to convince people who sometimes don’t have electricity and who don’t own a car, preferring a horse and buggy, that DNA testing is something they want to do. However, when I actually visit, I’ve had pretty good luck, at least with the more radical segments who have telephones (but not cell phones) and drive cars now.

So where does this leave me? I’m a little richer than when I began this comparison. I didn’t find new ancestors, but discovered DNA information about the ones I already had. I know more about them now, and about their ancestors, and where they were before I found them in my family tree. I know about their clan, who was Celtic, Anglo, Viking and Native American.

I also got to add two more confirmed Native American lines to my chart today. That made me feel great. I’m glad we’re unearthing the truth about our ancestors that was only held in whispered stories and shadows before.

Who can you find to test for your own DNA Pedigree chart?

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National Geographic – Geno 2.0 Announcement – The Human Story

Posted on July 25, 2012 by Roberta Estes

Have you ever dealt with something so massive and overwhelming it took a few days just to get your head wrapped around it? Well, that’s how I’ve been feeling about the new National Geographic Geno 2.0 announcement. It’s not just what has been announced, but the utterly massive amount of scientific research behind the scenes, and what it means to the rest of us.

If you think of all of the discoveries and progress that has been made in the 12 years since the advent of genetic genealogy, what you’re about to hear today dwarfs it all. Hold on tight – this is a white knuckle ride of a lifetime. The day I heard about this, I wandered around somewhat starry-eyed in amazement and kept muttering something terribly intelligent like “Wow, oh Wow.”

I’d like to share with you some of today’s big news and hope that you too share my sense of awe to be alive in such an exciting time, and to have not only a front row seat, but participating in making history. This isn’t a movie, it’s the real McCoy!

Let’s start with a bit of history about Nat Geo 1.0, the Genographic Project. Fasten your seatbelt, your E ticket ride starts here and now!

Nat Geo 1.0

Eight years ago, in April 2005, the National Geographic Genographic project was announced. The goal was to sell a total of 100,000 kits over 5 years to help fund the indigenous part of the project, which was to collect samples from indigenous peoples around the world to better understand population migration.

According to Nat Geo, this has been the most successful program they have ever undertaken. That in and of itself it an amazing statement, especially considering that there was a lively debate within Nat Geo prior to the project launch.

Someone opined to Spencer Wells that they wouldn’t even sell 10,000 kits, let alone 100,000. Well, they were wrong, 10,000 kits were sold the first day alone. I’m guessing that Bennett and Max at Family Tree DNA, whose test kits Nat Geo uses, has a sense of controlled panic about that time. The 100,000 kits were sold in the first 8 months and they still sell between 40,000 and 50,000 kits per year today.

How is that project doing? Well, it was scheduled to run for 5 years, and it’s now into its 7^th year. They have collected over 75,000 samples from indigenous people and on the public side, over 750,000 people in over 130 countries have bought kits to help fund the research. 32 publications either have been released or will be shortly. Of the 45 million dollars the project has grossed, National Geographic has contributed more than 1.7 million dollars to the Legacy Fund for investment back into the indigenous communities that participated in the Genographic project.

You might recall that the original Nat Geo project only tested 12 markers for men and the HVR1 region on the maternal side. At that time, 7 years ago, $99 for each of those was a great deal and the projects received a lot of new participants. About 20% of the Nat Geo participants transferred their result to Family Tree DNA, for free, so they could join projects and participate in genetic genealogy.

Today, 12 markers is quite light and so is HVR1 testing alone. Project administrators cringe when we see those, because we know it’s really not enough to do much with today. We’ve learned so much in the past 7 years. You don’t realize how much things have changed until you take a minute to look back.

At the same time we were learning, technology was also advancing. Seven years ago, running autosomal tests was simply cost prohibitive. If you consider that computer technology has decreased in price and doubled in speed every year or two (Moore’s Law), the advances in DNA sequencing technology and understanding are moving in the same directions (increased capability and decreased costs) by a factor of 5 as compared to computer technology. Literally, we are moving at the speed of light. See, I told you to hold on. I meant it!

Geno 2.0 – The Big Announcement

It’s amazing that something this big has been kept this quiet. Those of us involved have been bursting at the seams with excitement, and today is the big day. Last night about 9 o’clock we received word that the countdown had begun.

For a look at the new National Geographic webpage, go to www.genographic.com. This is the heart of the new Geno 2.0.

Geno 2.0 is still comprised of the 3 core components as before, the indigenous portion, the Legacy fund and the public participation portion. However the technology is changing, dramatically, and the public participation arena is expanding. Public participation will now include some “citizen science” projects, grants, an educational segment meaning kits in classrooms, and community based projects. All of this is made possible by advances in the core sciences and technology. This, plus the focus of the “Dream Team” of genetic genealogy and population genetics.

Thankfully, Spencer Wells at National Geographic and Bennett Greenspan and Max Blankfeld at Family Tree DNA prepared us in advance for what was coming, as much as you can prepare for a technological tsunami!

Let’s take a look at the technology and scientific advances that have occurred and what it means to us today.

New Chips and New Partnerships

The days of sequencing 12 markers in the lab are gone forever, replaced by high-speed sequencing that looks at half a million markers, or more, at a time, and for the same price as a 12 marker test and the mitochondrial DNA test, together, would have cost in Nat Geo 1.0.

However, when you’re looking at just the Y DNA and the mitochondrial, you’re missing 98% of the human genome, the part that isn’t Y or mitochondrial DNA. And that 98% holds many secrets, the secrets of our ancestors.

The National Geographic Society recruited one of the top geneticists in the world at Johns Hopkins, focused on autosomal genetic markers. He has spent the past two years identifying every known marker relevant to ancestry or population genetics that is NOT medically relevant. This includes the X and Y chromosomes, mitochondrial DNA and the balance of the autosomal markers.

Are you sitting down? Here’s the first of several bombs!

Relative to Y-line DNA, in 2010, just 2 years ago, the YCC SNP 2010 tree had a total of just over 800 SNPs that has been discovered. Today it still hasn’t reached 900. You can see the current tree at http://www.isogg.org/tree/index.html. Notice that all of the L SNPs were discovered by Thomas Krahn in the Family Tree DNA lab with the assistance of Family Tree DNA’s customers and project administrators. This is truly “crowd-science” in the flash mob sense.

Today, after a concerted effort of discovery involving many people, there are a total of 12,000 Y SNPS and of that, 10,000 of them are unique and new and have never been seen or published before. This means that your haplogroup will automatically be determined to the furthest branch of the tree with no additional SNPs to be tested. As this test becomes available to Family Tree DNA clients as an upgrade, it will signal the demise of the deep clade test.

If there is a project administrator sitting next to you, they have just fainted. The magnitude of this is simply mind-boggling.

Relative to mitochondrial DNA, 3352 unique (non-haplogroup defining) mutations have been discovered. To measure all of the relevant mitochondrial DNA mutations, including insertions and deletions, over 31,000 probes (locations) are needed on the new high density chips. Before this new approach, chip technology was unable to account for insertions and deletions, but that has been remedied by a new approach to an old problem. This means that haplogroups will be determined to their deepest level and they will be accurate, including insertions and deletions critical to haplogroup assignment.

Relative to autosomal DNA, over 75,000 Ancestrally Informative Markers (AIMs) have been discovered and included on the new chip, and that’s after removing any that might be considered medically informative. This astronomical number of SNPs will allow us to detect ethnicity and improve accuracy on a scale that we’ve never even dreamed about before. I specifically asked Spencer Wells if this will help resolve those “messy” situations where we have European, Native American and African admixture, and he indicated that it would. I can hardly wait. For those of us what have been waiting patiently, and some not so patiently, to be able to identify small amounts of admixture, this is the best news you could ever hope to hear! I told you that something wonderful was on the way!

Relative to admixture with Neanderthal, Denisovan and Melanesian man, meaning interbreeding, more than 30,000 SNPs have been identified that will signal interbreeding where it occurred between modern humans and ancient hominids. And yes, this means that it did occur! So indeed once again, you can begin wondering about your brother-in-law. He’s probably wondering about you too.

Relative to the X chromosome, it’s included. The X chromosome, because of its special inheritance pattern, gives us an additional, special tool when working with genetic genealogy. We’ll cover this in a future blog.

The New Chip

In total, the new SNP count to be included on the new Nat Geo 2.0 chip (photo above) includes both new and known existing SNPs in the following amounts:

Autosomal including X – 147,000
Neanderthal – 26,000
Denisovan – 1,500
Aboriginal – 13,000
Eskimo – 12,000
Chimpanzee – 1,100
Y Chromosome – 12,000
mtDNA – 31,000

This chip has been designed to distinguish between populations.

OMG – What Happened to the Haplotree?

We’re not done yet with bombshells.

After this new chip was created by Illumina specifically for National Geographic, about 1200 samples were run as proof of concept, including 400 WTY (Walk the Y), 350 mitochondrial full sequence and 500 Y samples. All of the samples run are checked and tested for all of the SNPs on the chip. Of course, females’ samples will fail on all of the Y haplogroup locations, etc.

Just based on this test run alone of 900 Y chromosome kits, the haplotree expanded from 862 SNPs to a total of 6153. If you’ve just said something akin to “Holy Cow,” you’re on the right track. Imagine what it will do with another 1000 or 10,000 or 100,000 tests. Right now, we’re making discoveries so fast we can hardly deal with them.

What Does This Mean?

In reality, what this means is that we will very soon use SNPs to determine heritage down to a genealogical meaningful timeframe, meaning 500 to maybe 1000 years. The standard STR (Short Tandem Repeat) markers we know and love will become the leaves on the branches of the tree and these will likely be used when there are no more SNPs to determine family groupings and line marker mutations within families.

New National Geographic Geno 2.0 Website

Needless to say, all of this discovery has prompted National Geographic to redo their website entirely. New maps are forthcoming. Yeah!! New maps include the migration maps as well as new haplogroup “heat maps” where the colors are graduated based on frequency.

There are entirely new capabilities too. The new website will show you as the center of a circle and you’ll be able to contact people who have tested at Nat Geo who are located near to you in the circle. Those closest to you, you’re most closely related to. Further away, more distantly related. Before, there was no matching between Nat Geo participants.

And yes, Geno 2.0 participants will still be able to transfer into Family Tree DNA for free. I hope they make that option much more visible or interactive.

A New Test Kit

Anyone wanting to participate in Geno 2.0 will have to order a new kit from National Geographic. The previous Nat Geo kits, if you recall, were anonymous unless you chose to transfer to Family Tree DNA, plus the permission you gave was specifically for mtdna or Y-line, not autosomal testing.

Furthermore, the DNA in many kits will be too old and will have degraded too much to use. Everyone ordering the new Geno 2.0 kit will receive a new swab kit, in an heirloom box. The comprehensive Y-line (haplogroup only), mtdna (haplogroup only) and autosomal testing will cost $199.

For Family Tree DNA clients who will be offered the upgrade in the late summer or fall, you will be able to upgrade if your DNA is less than 4 or 5 years old. Otherwise, you’ll receive a new swab kit too.

All processing will be done at the Family Tree DNA Houston facility.

New Results Pages

The new test of course requires all new results pages for participants.

Take a look at a few of the pages you can expect.

The results will be presented as a personal story.

Your story will also include information such as maps of where your ancestors lived and where they migrated.

I asked Spencer if participants will be able to download their results so that we can continue to compare them as we do today, using various phasing tools. Spencer replied, “Yes, raw results WILL be available for download. In the Genographic Project, you will always own your DNA results, and the genotype data will be yours to do with as you please. I feel very strongly that this is a cornerstone of ethical DTC genetic testing.” Way to go Spencer!!

As Geno 2.0 moves forward, additional analytical tools will be added.

Ordering

National Geographic is accepting pre-orders now. They will ship before the end of October, and they expect to be shipping significantly before that.

In Summary

Our world is changing, rapidly, and for the better. The door we’ve been peeking through for a decade now is swinging wide open. More brick walls will fall. We’ll find and meet new cousins. Ethnicities will be identified at a level never before possible. We’ll learn about our ancestors and the story of our past through their DNA that we carry today. It is the frontier within. DNA is truly the gift that keeps on giving!

“One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Neil Armstrong, July 20, 1969

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Racial Admixture in Elizabethan London

Posted on July 22, 2012 by Roberta Estes

We typically don’t think of Africans in London in the 1500s, but they were there, as proven in parish and other records. Thankfully, they were rare enough that when there was a record pertaining to them, their ethnicity is recorded. But by 1600, after the Queen’s legendary decades-long conflict with Spain where galley slaves from Spanish ships were “rescued” when the ships were captured, the number of Africans and other “Moorish” people were becoming problematic, at least to the Queen, and she sought to repatriate at least some of them to “Barbary.”

Recently, the BBC ran a wonderful story about this which you can find at this link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18903391

In the haplogroup E1b1a project, it’s not uncommon for a person who knows their family to be “white” to discover their haplogroup is of African origin. Many times, one can account for this by more fully researching the early colonial records of America, but not always. Perhaps we need to extend the research net a bid wider to include both London and Bristol records.

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