Category Archives: STR – Short Tandem Repeat

A Forest of Fathers: FamilyTreeDNA’s Y-DNA Tree Tops 100,000 Branches

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Congratulations to FamilyTreeDNA and all of their customers who contributed to this absolutely monumental milestone. The Y-DNA tree has now reached 100,000 branches.

Chart courtest of FamilyTreeDNA

I knew they were getting close because the official January numbers were 99,777.

Congratulations to the entire team, but especially to Michael Sager, Senior Phylogeneticist, who has been the chief architect of the tree “forever.” This is definitely his baby.

Here’s Michael in 2020 at RootsTech discussing the Y-DNA tree construction methodology.

The Y-DNA tree is built using the results of 698,000 individual Y-DNA testers, plus thousands of both academic and ancient results.

These 100,000 tree branches are built from 857,000 variants, known as SNP mutations. Think of those as a huge 857,000-piece puzzle that Michael Sager has spent the past decade assembling into the Y-DNA tree of mankind, reaching all the way back to Y-DNA Adam.

In the tree today, haplogroup A-PR2021, named for variant or SNP (single nucleotide polymorphism) PR2921, is Y-DNA Adam, who lived in Africa about 234,000 years ago.

Click on any image to enlarge

FamilyTreeDNA has made their entire Y-DNA tree public and free, and that’s in addition to the baker’s dozen reports available through Discover for each haplogroup.

Let’s take a look!

The Public Y-DNA Tree by Country

You can view the public Y-DNA tree, here, and can select to view the tree by:

  • Variants (mutations) that define each haplogroup
  • Country
  • Surname

For example, here is the oldest, or top portion of the tree, using “by Country,” the first of three options.

Notice two things at far right:

  • There may be a “+” when there are too many countries to display
  • The 3 dots

Clicking on the three dots provides you with the option for a “Country Report” or “Surname Report” for that specific haplogroup.

The Country Report shows the number of haplogroup members from each country. Remember that countries are self-reported by the testers. The country should be the location where the tester’s earliest known paternal ancestor (EKA) was living or from.

You can see how many people are members of this specific branch, and in the next column, how many people are members of this branch plus all “son” or downstream branches. One column excludes new haplogroup letters (when a different base haplogroup is formed), and the other includes all downstream haplogroups, even if the beginning branch letter changes. The final “Distribution” column shows the percentage of people in that haplogroup who originated from each country.

In this case, 43% are from the US, which probably means that they are brick-walled here, given that the only people originally “from” the United States were Native Americans who fall into specific subclades of haplogroups C and Q.

If you’d like more information about A-V148, or any other haplogroup, you can go to Discover and enter a haplogroup name. I always check the Ancient Connections because archaeological remains anchor haplogroups in a particular place at a particular time. We’ll cover more about Discover in a minute.

The Public Y-DNA Tree by Variant

This haplotree view “by Variant” shows the variants, or SNP mutations, that identify each haplogroup.

You can see that Haplogroup A-PR2921, the granddaddy of the tree, is based on only one mutation, PR2921, which is also the haplogroup name. This means two things:

  • Every haplogroup beneath this branch on the tree also has the mutation, PR2921, which is how we know it’s the “original” founding mutation
  • This haplogroup cannot be split further, because there are no additional variants

For example, look at the branch, A-L1090, the first “child haplogroup” of A-PR2921. A-L1090 has the 26 mutations displayed, plus more, for a total of 695.

This means that as more men test, there are literally more than 695 opportunities for various men to match on a unique subset of those mutations, plus new mutations never discovered before, forming new haplogroups.

Some lines have died out over time, and others may be quite rare. This is the perfect example of why it’s important for every male to take the Big Y test, aside from genealogy.

Looking on down the tree to the next haplogroup “generation,” we can see that haplogroup A-V148 has 21 descendant haplogroups, but its sibling subclade, A-V168 has 99,967 – essentially the rest of the tree.

The Public Y-DNA Tree by Surname

Viewing the tree “by Surname” can be very useful. Surnames are shown beside their haplogroup if there are two or more individuals:

  • With the same spelling of the surname who are assigned to this haplogroup
  • Who are members of a public DNA Group Project
  • Who have given permission for their information to be displayed publicly within the project

You can see that haplogroup A-V148 has one surname showing – Goddard.

Haplogroup A-M31 shows four: Bass, Johnson, Evans and Cruise.

Clicking on the three dots shows the Surname Report.

This report reveals that there are seven men with the Goddard surname and no other surnames are currently lissted for this haplogroup.

You might be a member of this haplogroup even if your surname isn’t Goddard. Surnames were only adopted in the past few hundred years, and many have changed during that time for a wide variety of reasons, including spelling variations. Not everyone who is in the matching database has joined a project, so they may show up on your match list, but not be visible here.

Since we know that several Goddard men are in some project, how do we figure out which project or projects they have joined?

Discover’s Suggested Projects

Go to Discover and enter the haplogroup. Click the big orange “Search” button, which will display the Haplogroup Story page for that haplogroup.  .

From the Discover menu at left, select “Suggested Projects”.

For haplogroup A-V148, 10 projects are listed based on which projects members of this haplogroup have joined or on project administrator settings. Those projects alone may provide ancestral hints. Many people, if not most, join multiple projects, such as haplogroup projects, surname projects, and geographic or ethnic projects.

You can click through to any of the projects listed for any haplogroup to take a look. I use my browser search function to search for specific surnames on project pages.

You may find that someone who descends from your ancestor has tested and is waiting for you to match them – plus other genealogical hints as well.

Is Your Surname in the Database?

How can you tell whether your surname is in the database? That’s a great question!

In the public tree, there’s a “Search by Surname” feature. I searched for Estes, and discovered that Estes appears on 8 different branches of haplogroup R. Next, I need to click on haplogroup R, which is directly beneath the search box.

This doesn’t mean there are only 8 men who have tested, but that they are found on 8 different tree branches.

Remember that men who obtain a Family Finder haplogroup are also included on the free Public Tree, so I’ll probably find some Estes men on higher branches of the tree than they would appear if they had taken a Big Y-700 DNA test. Hopefully, they will upgrade, which will help them and all Estes descendants by piecing together our Estes lineages.

Sure enough, using my browser search to search for “Estes”, I discovered the name included with 500 other surnames in haplogroup R-L21, in R-DF49, in R-1690, and then the goldmine – four haplogroups that have ONLY the surname Estes listed.

These are our Estes twigs on the haplotree’s branches, and define four lines that begin with Silvester Estes born in 1522 in Kent, England. These haplogroups are how we proved where our line originated, and how we place testers who are uncertain about their genealogy on their correct tree branches today.

Don’t forget about both the surname and country reports available to the right when searching by surname in the Public Tree. You can also navigate to Discover to learn more about any of these haplogroups in which your surname appears.

Iff you’re an Estes male, you may or may not land in one of these haplogroups. You might even be a member of a different lineage altogether. The only way you’ll know is to take the Big Y-700 test, or minimally, the introductory 37 and 111 marker tests to view your matches. These entry-level tests provide a predicted haplogroup based on STR markers, but you’ll only be placed in your proper place in the tree with the definitive Big Y-700 test. I wrote about the difference between STRs and SNPs here.

Obviously, Y-DNA is only applicable to biologically male testers who have a Y chromosome, and you’ll only see surnames on the tree if multiple people with that exact surname have tested and joined projects, but there’s one more place to look if you want to see how many people with your surname have tested at FamilyTreeDNA.

Group Projects Search

In the footer of every FamilyTreeDNA page, under Community, you’ll find “Group Projects.” No, I don’t know why they buried this tool here, because I find it very useful, and you’ll never find it if you don’t know where to look. But now you do!

Enter the surname you are seeking and click “Search.”

You’ll see at the bottom of the search results page that 391 people whose surname is spelled exactly “Estes” have taken a DNA test at FamilyTreeDNA.

Clearly, some will be males, and others female, and they may have:

  • Taken the autosomal Family Finder test
  • Uploaded an autosomal test from another vendor
  • Taken the mitochondrial DNA direct matrilineal test (your mother’s mother’s mother’s direct line through all females)
  • Taken a Y-DNA test (males only) for the direct patrilineal (surname) line

Lots of people in the database will be descended from Estes ancestors, but won’t carry the surname. This search is an invaluable resource for genealogists seeking their ancestors’ surnames and lineages. Check it out by entering the surnames of your four grandparents and see what’s there!

I use this search tool, combined with projects to find actual testers who represent my ancestral lines and their haplogroups. Then I search the public tree and use Discover to learn about my ancestors. Which brings me back to why this milestone is so important.

Congratulations on a HUGE Milestone for Mankind

The trip to 100,000 haplotree branches was a long and sometimes challenging road. What an amazing accomplishment! Today, the tree is growing at warp speed, but it began with “horses and buggies” in 2003.

  • In 2003, the YCC Consortium published a paper defining the structure of the Y-DNA tree which, then, consisted of 153 branches based only on 243 SNPs. That’s all that had been discovered in academia at the time. But citizen science was coming into its own and many more haplogroup discoveries would soon follow, thanks to our testing pioneers.
  • In 2006, ISOGG committed to developing and maintaining a public, manually curated haplotree based on SNPs discovered at different labs. The ISOGG tree was published annually, with the final version released in July 2020.
  • In 2006, there were about 250 branches on the Y-DNA tree and SNP discoveries were rare events. Today, with the Big Y-700, new SNP discoveries occur at the rate of several hundred per week, thanks to the testing public.
  • In 2010, the YCC consortium released its final tree that included only 440 branches.
  • In 2013, FamilyTreeDNA introduced the Big Y test, which used the newer NGS (next generation sequencing) scanning technique instead of targeting specific locations on the Y-chromosome. The Big Y-700 test scans millions of locations in the gold standard region of the Y chromosome. It reads known Y-DNA SNP locations for haplogroup placement, but also identifies mutations not previously discovered that are often lineage-specific. That’s the key to identifying new haplogroups. Haplogroups are literally named after their SNP.
  • 2018 was a banner year. There were 17,966 branches on the tree.
  • By 2018, the haplotree was benefiting from what was termed a “SNP tsunami,” which rapidly expanded the tree. In June, 2018, FamilyTreeDNA named their 100,000th SNP. That too was a huge milestone, which I wrote about, here. Not every SNP discovered becomes its own haplogroup, of course, but they all must be placed appropriately on the tree.
  • In September of 2018, FamilyTreeDNA introduced their Public Tree.
  • That avalanche of SNP discovery meant that the volunteer-maintained ISOGG tree was struggling mightily to keep up with the onslaught, publishing one final tree in 2020. The landscape had changed. A yearly, independent tree that compiled information from multiple sources was no longer necessary. Haplogroup and SNP discoveries were being made almost exclusively at FamilyTreeDNA, who publishes and maintains their Y-DNA tree organically as SNPs are discovered and added to the tree.
  • In December 2021, the FamilyTreeDNA Y-DNA haplotree reached 50,000 branches. I wrote about that milestone, here.
  • In just over four years, that has doubled at a rate of about about 1000 new branches per month. That’s mind-boggling!
  • On February 5, 2026, the haplotree reached 100,000 branches! I checked earlier today (Feb. 6th) and there are already 39 more haplogroups. No moss growing under their feet. They’ve reached for the treetops and gone beyond!

Reaching 100,000 branches on the Y-DNA tree is an absolutely amazing achievement, both scientifically and genealogically. Perhaps best of all, reconstructing the lineage and paths of our ancestors is the only way we can reach indefinitely back in time. Beyond surnames and far beyond what autosomal DNA can touch.

Based on that, we can add genetic anthropology to the fields that have benefited immensely from the achievements of the tree. Conversely, genetic anthropology has contributed to the construction of the tree with the sequencing of ancient DNA results, allowing thousands of ancient samples to be incorporated.

Every contemporary haplogroup descends from Y-DNA Adam. Given that Adam lived at least 234,000 years ago, that represents about 9,360 direct-line ancestors (at 25 years per generation) for each one of us. At 20 years per generation, we have 11,700. Wouldn’t Y-line Adam be utterly dumbstruck to learn that he has 8 billion descendants, of which slightly more than half are males who still carry his defining haplogroup mutation, A-PR2021!

Thanks to the FamilyTreeDNA public Y-DNA tree and searches, plus the amazing Discover tools, we can now peel back the curtain of time on both recent and distant ancestors by walking our haplogroups back one at a time until we meet our earliest ancestor of all – Adam

Want to Meet Adam? Here’s How You Can Participate

You can participate in building the Y-DNA tree of humankind and meet Adam by taking a Big Y-700 DNA test, which you can order here. If you’re a female, you can sponsor a Y-DNA test for a male relative, such as a father, uncle, or brother who represents one of your surname lines. But don’t stop with your own paternal line – reach out and make those same discoveries for all of your ancestral lines! Your ancestors are waiting to meet you!!

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The Big Y-700 Test Marries Science to Genealogy

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Recently, one of my long-time friends and project co-administrators asked me a simple question.

  • What do the FamilyTreeDNA Big Y-700 test and the Time Tree tell us when we have genealogy trees provided by testers?
  • What does the Discover Time Tree tell us that’s different, and how do we reconcile the Time Tree and genealogy?

Those are great questions.

Sometimes, I get so buried in the details of genetic genealogy that I neglect the obvious, so I’m writing this article for my co-admin and anyone else with the same questions.

Time Tree Versus Genealogy Question

Of course, as a genealogist, my first answer would be that we always need to be cautious about user-provided trees. Even when the genealogy is accurate, that’s no guarantee there wasn’t a biological disruption that caused the genetic line not to be the same as the surname line.

Almost every lineage has examples of people whose genealogy was “off” or misattributed paternity occurred someplace upstream, meaning that someone carries the surname but does not descend from that biological lineage.

However, relative to DNA projects, the Big Y-700 tests provide one very important feature that STR testing does not and cannot do.

The Big Y-700 test creates a genetic tree, in conjunction with other testers, which provides scientifically calculated dates when branches of the genetic tree were formed.

The genetic tree should align, at least closely, with testers’ genealogical trees.

In other words, if their genealogy is accurate, testers “should” fit in (or at least near) the appropriate places on the branches of the genetic tree.

Furthermore, for people trying to sort out their actual branch in the tree, the Big Y-700 test is MUCH MORE reliable than the earlier STR (short tandem repeat) tests that are prone to random and back mutations. At one time, STR tests were all that was available, but now,  SNPs have been added to our arsenal. SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) are extremely stable and reliable mutations.

I’m getting ready to record a new Y-DNA webinar, and I’m giving you a sneak peek of a couple of my slides here. I’ll publish an announcement when the webinar is available.

STRs Versus SNPs

Historic Y-DNA testing tested only a limited number of STR locations. That test reported the number of repeats at a specific genetic location on the Y chromosome. Today, the 37, 67, and 111 marker STR tests are still available to purchase.

What are the major differences between the two types of tests, and why would someone purchase one over the other?

If you purchase one of the STR tests, you purchase testing at a specific number of locations, such as 37, 67, and 111. The Big Y-700 test includes at least 700 STR locations, but the specificity of the Big Y-700 SNP testing replaces most of the STR test results in terms of lineage definition.

SNP mutations, when discovered in more than one man in a particular haplogroup lineage, are then named as haplogroups. That mutation is then found in each directly descended male in that line.

STR – 37, 67, 111 Big Y-700 (STRs & SNPs)
Tests A limited number of repeat STR markers – Big Y guarantees 700+ NGS scan targets ~ 25 million locations
Focus Comparatively short genealogy timeframe All-inclusive – recent genealogy plus older to ancient
Includes Can upgrade to Big Y-700 Includes STR tests, separate matching, Globetrekker, Discover, and more
Tree Genealogy, customer provided Genetic Tree – Group Time Tree coordinates with genealogy if provided
Tools STR tools STR tools plus SNP tools & robust Discover
Haplogroup Estimated based on STR values Confirmed to the most granular level possible – evergreen
Useful When Exclusion testing, less costly, entry-level Discover provides lineage, ancient DNA, TMRCA, and more
Matching STRs only STR plus Big Y – both can be useful
Trees Customer provided genealogy Time Tree, Group Time Tree, Block Tree, Classic Tree + 1 more soon

Put simply, the STR tests are now entry-level. Once you see what the Big Y-700 provides, you’ll absolutely want to upgrade to that test. Most of the time, if I know I’m testing someone from the correct line, I just purchase the Big Y-700 out the gate. If I’m not sure I’m testing the correct lineage, I’ll purchase the STR test first to make sure they match the correct lineage before upgrading to the Big Y-700.

Discover

The Discover tool was introduced to provide additional information to Big Y testers and others seeking haplogroup information. STR results can only predict a relatively high-level haplogroup, usually a few thousand years ago, while the Big Y-700 provides testers with an extremely granular haplogroup – usually decades to a few hundred years ago. Often, living men that span 2 or 3 descendant generations (grandfather, father, sons) discover that they have their own haplogroup branch on the tree of mankind!

However, if no one else from your line has tested in hundreds of years, Discover can only work with available information.

Let’s take a quick look at the Estes Group Time Tree.

Estes Project Group Time Trees

Group projects have Group Time Trees. You can view the Estes surname project, here. You can find a project for any surname by either googling “<surname> DNA Project” or scrolling to the VERY bottom of the FamilyTreeDNA main page.

If you’re signed into FamilyTreeDNA, you can also find projects in the top banner.

Once you’re on the project page, you’ll see an option for DNA Results (assuming the administrators have not made the project entirely private.)

Click on the DNA Results link and select Y-DNA.

Next, you’ll see “Group Time Tree.”

Group Time Tree Display

What appears next depends on how the project administrators have grouped the project participants.

I’ve grouped the Estes project by genealogical line, with the exception of a couple of people who carry the Estes surname but have experienced an adoption or other unknown parental event in their Estes lineage.

In some cases, there are simply two same-name lineages that were never from the same biological line. Unfortunately, occasionally they settle in the same place, making the genealogy difficult. Even worse, until Y-DNA testing came along, there was often no way to know they were two different families.

This situation is actually where the Big Y-700 test shines.

 

The Group Time Tree shows the genetic tree scientifically constructed from the SNP results of the Big Y-test results of the testers, at left. At right you’ll see the surnames of the testers along with their Earliest Known Ancestor (EKA) if they have entered that information.

Initially, you don’t even realize you’re actually looking at two types of information merged together. This display allows testers to see the genetic branching tree structure, at left, which is reflective of their actual genealogy, at right.

You can see that the birth year of Sylvester Estes, entered by a tester with haplogroup R-BY482, is 1622. Please note, there’s a typo. Sylvester was born in 1522, NOT 1622. This is a perfect example of what I meant by tree information sometimes being inaccurate and it’s very important when trying to correlate the genetic tree and the user-provided genealogy.

We discovered that R-BY482 (red profile above, at left) is an Estes “signature” haplogroup for the Estes line originating in Deal, England, with three other haplogroups that formed in descendant generations. We know this because every descendant from this line has this mutation.

R-BY490 was formed between Sylvester’s son Robert Estes, born about 1555, and his son, born about 1600, also named Sylvester. We know this because all of the descendants of Sylvester (born circa 1600) carry this mutation, but Robert’s son, Robert, born in 1603, does not.

The genealogy portion of the Group Time Tree, above, doesn’t reveal that information because testers either don’t know their genealogy that far back or perhaps listed an earlier known ancestor, such as Nicholas, born in 1495.

Click to enlarge

I created a spreadsheet tracking the Big Y-700 testers of the descendants of Nicholas Estes, along with their descendant haplogroups.

We know that Robert, born in 1555, carries R-BY490 because both of his sons, Abraham and Richard, inherited that mutation, seen with green arrows.

However, this calls into question the associated genealogy because if Robert, born in 1603, descended from Robert, born in 1555, he too would have the mutation R-BY490 since Robert’s other two sons do. Note that the user-provided birth year typo of 1622 which should be 1522 is a century off – enough to be within the genetic band haplogroup birth band – but impossible for the genealogy table.

There is one other possibility: kit 166011, the descendant of Robert born in 1603, could have taken the earlier Big Y-500 test and never upgraded to the more powerful Big Y-700. That’s too much detail for this article, but the discrepancy between the genetic tree and the genealogy tree alerts us that additional research is warranted. The genealogy submitted for tester 166011 confirms that, indeed, 1622 is a typo.

There are no other descendants of known sons of Nicholas or Sylvester born in 1522 to test, but perhaps another will surface one day.

You can see that the more testers in any particular line, the more granularity we can achieve.

The Genetic Tree

How close is the genetic tree to the genealogical tree that has been confirmed?

We know that Sylvester was born in 1522, and his father Nicholas in about 1496. The scientifically calculated creation date of R-BY482 is 1493, just 3 years before the birth of Nicholas. Based on this, there’s a good chance that this mutation occurred between Nicholas’s unknown father and him, or perhaps between Nicholas and Sylvester.

You can view the scientific details of any haplogroup in Discover.

Discover’s BY-482 scientific details page shows its creation date range.

Marriage

You can see that the scientifically created tree and the genealogy information are both important.

In fact, the combination of both allowed us to identify the correct branch of a Wilbur man who matches Estes men but doesn’t know where he fits in the tree.

His haplogroup placed him definitively on the more recent R-BY154784 branch, and his autosomal results then confirmed his specific path of descent because he matches descendants of three generations of Estes men’s wives, showing that his branch descends from Joseph Estes and his wife Ritty Lee, through son Chism, on down to our tester. In this case, autosomal DNA results provided a boost-assist to the genealogy, which helped identify the generation that the Y-DNA haplogroup R-BY154784 actually formed.

This also informs us that Joseph Estes, born in 1780, carried haplogroup R-BY154784 because both of his sons have it. If Joseph hadn’t had that mutation, then both of his sons couldn’t have inherited it.

Therefore, the mutation that formed haplogroup R-BY154784 had to occur between Moses, born in 1711, and John, born in 1732. We know that because Moses’s other son’s descendants do not have that haplogroup.

The more descendants of any ancestor that test, the more specific and accurate the descendant haplogroup formation dates will be.

The marriage of genetic trees and genealogy is powerful indeed.

More Information

For those seeking more information, 70 pages of my new book, The Complete Guide to FamilyTreeDNA – Y-DNA, Mitochondrial, Autosomal and X-DNA is devoted to Y-DNA results.

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