Who Do You Think You Are? Live 2014

For the first time, organizers of Who Do You Think You Are? Live changed the conference from Friday, Saturday and Sunday to Thursday, Friday and Saturday.  Sunday was always very slow, so those of us who have been attending for the last six years were curious to see what this change would mean.

Although attendance was down from last year, the numbers for each day were really consistent.  (Thanks to Brian Swann for the following information.)

Thursday 20 February          4,253

Friday 21 February              4,353

Saturday 22 February          4,522

         Total                                 13,128

A few overall views of the Olympia Hall

We experienced this consistency at the Family Tree DNA stand as well.  The line at the stand often went the entire length and at times wrapped around the corner.  All of us were too busy to get a photo of the longest lines. Many of us were doing “triage”, as we called it, (answering questions and explaining what test would best help the customer) before the customer reached the table to swab.

Actually, even with the lower attendance FTDNA sold more test kits than ever before.  About 3 p.m. on Saturday they ran out of all they brought and many that a local administrator had in store.  At that point, they kept selling and told customers they would mail the kit at no charge to them. As a result, we can only state that they sold over 580 kits. However, this year not as many free kits were given away by administrators.  It is always just luck on who walks by the ISOGG stand to see the list.

And what a nice treat. My distant DNA cousin on my paternal line, Gerard Corcoran from Dublin (whom I actually met in Shanghai a few years ago) came to London.

Thursday all the helpers at the FTDNA and ISOGG stands arrived and by 10:15 the presentations began.  Maurice Gleeson, our Irish Leprechaun of London along with his helpers Debbie and Brian, organized all the speakers and recorded most of their presentations which can be seen on U-Tube.  DNA Lectures - Who DoYou Think You Are 2014.  As the audio on Friday did not work, some of the presentations are not available, but will be in time. 

There was a wonderful selection of speakers this year.  The schedule as follows.

Thursday:

10.15  DNA For Beginners – the Three Tests with Debbie Kennett

11.15  Autosomal DNA – A Step-by Step Approach to Analyzing Your atDNA Matches with Maurice Gleeson

12.15  Men, Metal and The Recent Re-Peopling of Western Europe with Mike Hammer

13.15  Who are the Europeans? With Jean Manco

14.15  Citizen Science – An Online Community Approach to Researching Haplogroup R1b1a2 with Andy Grierson

15.15  Scottish DNA – Clans, Families and Surnames with Alastair Macdonald

16.15  Combining Traditional and Genetic Genealogy – The Pomeroy DNA Project with Chris Pomery

Friday

10.15  Which DNA Test is the Best for You? With Maurice Gleeson

11.15 Autosomal DNA Projects – What Are They and What Can you Get from Them? With Emily Aulicino

12.15  How DNA Re-Wrote My Family Tree with Geoff Swinfield

13.15  Did Your Folk Go Wandering as Rome Fell? With Jean Manco

14.15  Out of Africa and Ancient Migrations to Europe and Britain with Chris Stringer

15.15  Famous British DNA with Katerine Borges

16.15  Chromosomes, Conquerors and Castles – DNA Test and the Cruise/Cruse/Cruwys One-Name Study with Debbie Kennett

Saturday

10.15  The Basics of DNA Test with Katherine Borges

11.15  Autosomal DNA Success Stories – How atDNA solved Family Mysteries with Maruice Gleeson, Katherine Borges and Emily Aulicino

12.15  Men, Metal and The Recent Re-Peopling of Western Europe with Mike Hammer

13.15  Genetic Investigations into the Black Death in London with Kristen Bos

14.15  Finding the Fallen – Identifying Remains Recovered from the Western Front with Andy Robertshaw

16.45  Wales, DNA and Surnames with Brian Swann

Most of the group

Chris, Katherine, Max

George, Nora, Craig

As usual FTDNA treated us all to dinner at Pizza Express Thursday. We filled two rows of tables this year, and I'm not sure I captured everyone.

James, Andy Grierson, Joss, Debbie

Of course, Katherine had to order the infamous Dough Balls which resulted in all of us explaining the story to the new attendees. You'll have to attend to get the scoop!

At the close of the conference, someone opened a bottle of wine and Max opened a bottle of champagne to celebrate. Then we all posed for a group photo before we all headed to dinner together at Yaz, an Indian restaurant across from Olympia Hall, courtesy of FTDNA.

Back: CG, Brian, Derrell, George, Nora, John and Ann, Bennett, Max,, Andy Grierson, Chris, Candy, Katherine, Debbie
Front: Maurice, Linda and Emily
Joss is missing as he took the photo


Of course after the three days of work, we played. 

On Sunday some of us visited Winchester Cathedral.

This year it was a trip to Oxford on Monday to hear Bruce Winney do an encore of his WDYTYA presentation with more time for questions.  

While in Oxford we had a lovely lunch at the Red Lion.

Then, a quick trip to the Bodleian Library, a huge depository for all books printed anywhere since Medieval times. Oh, to have time to explore that resource!

Katherine, Emily, Brian, Craig, Debbie, Linda, Maurice

Some of us visited Oxford Castle where we put Maurice in the stocks and all stood for a mug shot.

On Tuesday some traveled to Warwick to see the castle there and had a delicious lunch at the Gateway Café  under the guidance of Chef Katherine.  

Once again a wonderful time in London gathering DNA samples in hopes that the testers can make progress with their genealogy, that some of them are related to us, and spending great times with our wonderful friends across the pond!

So who  is coming with us next year?

Enjoy,

Emily

Big Y is rolling on...

   

      My, oh my!  The Big Y is here!

Since the Family Tree DNA Conference last November, thousands of Big Y tests have been ordered, but only 100 Big Y tests were released February 27^th with the remaining initial orders to be delivered over the next month.  At that point the backlog should be resolved, and the Big Y will keep rolling on...

The Big Y explores your deep ancestral lines and is intended for those who are interested in discovering what SNPs appear on their Y-chromosome. This extensive test uses next-generation sequencing and maps the SNP positions. The Y-chromosome has about 60 million bases, but a large percentage is inaccessible or cannot be reliably tested with today’s technology.  The gold standard is said to be 10 million bases, but the Big Y targets over 13 million and gets from 11.5 to 12.5 million reads on the average.  The Big Y tests over 25,000 SNPs out of the 36,562 known Y-SNPs in the FTDNA database.

First, let’s back-up and clarify what a SNP is:

      A single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP; pronounced snip) is the most common type of genetic variation in humans, according to the Genetics Home Reference website.  SNPs can be found throughout a person’s DNA roughly one SNP in every 300 nucleotides on average. With 3 billion base pairs in the human genome, that is about 10 million SNPs per human. Each SNP is a form of mutation (change) and represents a difference in a single DNA building block, called a nucleotide. For example, a SNP may result in the replacement of the base cytosine (C) or guanine (G) with the base thymine (T) or adenine (A) at a certain location on a chromosome.  Generally, these markers mutate only once, although back mutations or reversions (a situation where a mutation results in the nucleotide being restored to its previous condition at that location) do occur.

      As a mutation is carried forward in the consecutive generations, SNP markers help determine haplogroups for Y-chromosome DNA. For genealogists, narrowing those haplogroups to detailed subclades (sub-branches) is beneficial.  It helps them determine with whom in the general population they have a closer genetic relationship (a match).

      When a new SNP is found, a new haplogroup subclade is determined, but before the geneticists declare a new haplogroup subclade, a required minimum number of people must have the new SNP. This is the major reason why some haplogroup project administrators will ask testers from projects to test for a certain SNP. These haplogroup administrators wish to increase the number of known testers for that SNP so the geneticists will place it on the phylogenetic tree. All the descendants of the person with this newly discovered SNP will carry that mutation, and that mutation defines that new group.

       

Big Y Results

The customer’s personal web pages will contain two tabs.  The first is for reporting Known SNPs while the second is for Novel Variants; that is, the list of SNPs not on the list of 36,582 known and previously names SNPs.  So clearly, this test may produce some future SNPs among some families or clans which are currently not recognized.

Known SNPs

The customer’s webpage for Known SNPs includes several columns: SNP Name, Derived?, On Y-Tree?, Reference, Genotype, Confidence.  The default is 10 items shown at a time, but more can be viewed.  The lower left tells you how many entries are in your result, stating something similar to “Showing 1 of 10 of 25,000 of 36,564”.  All the results are shown, both positive and negative so there is no question about whether a specific location was tested, or its results.  There is also the option of a no-call or poor confidence call at that location.

The SNP Name column is just the names of the SNPs listed alphabetically. You can search on the full SNP name or a partial name. 

The Derived? column indicates whether the particular genotype is ancestral or derived.  Derived means the individual is positive for the SNP.  There options to SHOW ALL, YES (+), NO (-) or ?.  The question mark means the SNP is a no call, the SNP is not in the coverage region or there is not enough data to determine its value.)  The default is YES.

On Y-Tree? column indicates whether the SNP exists on the Y-chromosome phylogentic tree.  The options to filter this column are: SHOW ALL, YES, NO.

The Reference column provides the nucleotide base (adenine, cytosine, thymine or guanine) as indicated by the GRCh37 human reference genome which is maintained by the Genome Reference Consortium.  Those options include: SHOW ALL, A, C, T, G

The Genotype column is the tester’s nucleotide base at a given SNP potion.  Those options include:  SHOW ALL, A, C, T, G, ?.  The question mark means the result is not known.

The Confidence column is a score that represents how confident FTDNA is in the accuracy of the data for that SNP.  Options include:  SHOW ALL, HIGH (no question at that location), MEDIUM (ok, but the bottom of the border line to be called high) and UNKNOWN (not clear enough to call or no data).

Novel Variants

The second results page covers Novel Variants which are the list of SNPs that not on the list of 36,582 known and previously named SNPs.  These SNPs will be analyzed on an on-going basis in the case a SNP is significant enough to be given a name and added to the Y-phylogenetic tree (Y-haplotree).  However, some SNPs may remain novel and could signify a private, family or clan variant.  Project administrators may submit these novel SNPs to be considered for naming via the SNP Request form on their GAP (Group Administrator Pages) website. However, getting these new SNPs approved will take time.

This page provides columns for Position, Reference, Genotype and Confidence.  These columns are the same categories as above, but are for the SNPs not on the Y-haplotree.  All novel mutations are being reported by a reference number which can be compared to like data from any source.

There is also the following links on each page: 

Help (refers you to the FAQs on the topic, but FTDNA is transitioning to their Learning Center)

Haplotree (links to your haplogtree page)

Y Reset (allows you to rest the filters to the default filters)

Download Raw Data

Downloading the raw data cannot be done until sometime next week.  Files can be downloaded by using 3^rd party tools, VCF (Variant Call File) which is a tab-delimited system that can be imported to Excel (A sample VCF file can be found in the 1000 Genomes Wiki) and BED file  which is a text file that shows a range of positions.  BAM files will be available soon as the delivery method is being finalized since the file is so large.  Insertions and deletions are included in the download files, but not reported on the customer’s results page.

Once all the customer data from this initial sale is loaded into a huge database, the new SNPs that are found in enough of the population to be named will be added to the Y-haplotree, and at that time, a customer who has not taken the Big Y could order that particular SNP. Novel variants will remain that, and will continue to be reported on client pages.

In about six weeks FTDNA will publish a paper on the average number of novel SNPs per person which are being found, the mutation rates, and findings.

HaploTree version 2014

The new Y-tree is coming, honest!  The reason for the delay includes the “SNP tsunami” as the Geno 2.0 has helped increase the size of the tree to about 8 times larger than it was four years ago. The Big Y will increase it even more.  Negative results for SNPs that are downstream of the most terminal positive SNP will be included.  For example L21+ on the R tree has 9 downstream SNPs which will be reported on the tree, even the negative result for a tester. However, if there are no negative SNPs for an already terminal SNP, there can be no further reporting as in the case of M222+.  Future updates to the tree will record the positive SNPs on your webpage.

Suggestions Welcomed!

If you have a suggestion for additional Big Y tools or features, email Elise or Rebekah and they will forward the request to management for consideration.

elisef@genebygene.com

rebekahc@genebygene.com

To learn more about the Big Y consult the following, as I did.

FTDNA Learning Center (to view the various pages mentioned above)

http://www.familytree.com/learn/

FTDNA Forums

http://forums.familytreedna.com

Facebook

http://www.facebook.com/FamilyTreeDNA

Genetic Genealogy Blogs

DNAeXplained – Genetic Genealogy http://dna-explained.com/2014/02/27/big-y-release/

Cruwys news http://cruwys.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/the-big-y-roll-out-snp-tsunami-is-on.html

You may always see a list of scheduled webinars on the Family Tree DNA webinar page. http://www.familytreedna.com/learn/ftdna/webinars/

Ordering Individual SNPs or the Big Y

Once the results of the thousands of tests which have been ordered are available, others who appear to have the same Y-SNP signature may wish to order individual SNPs to determine their terminal SNP (last currently known SNP on the Y-haplotree for which you test positive), but remember that 17 SNPs at $39 each is the cost of the Big Y so confer with your haplogroup administrator first. Once the backlog is cleared, the results can be expected in about 8-10 weeks. Order from Family Tree DNA.

Enjoy!

Emily

1 Mar 2014