dancinchantilly
Joined: 25 Jan 2011
Replies: 23
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Posted: Mon May 13, 2013 1:17 pm
Post subject: Genetics (DNA)
I AM WHAT I AM, OR AM I
It is human nature to know where we came from, who we came from, and are there more of us around. DNA testing may or may not give you the answers that you are seeking. For recent ancestors, that is in the hundreds of year, Y-DNA, the male line, is the gold standard. However, even with DNA matches, surnames may not match and a paper trail may not exist. Thus, you may not find g-g-g-g grandpa and his kin. That is certainly the case with my father's DNA, which matched with a Ruthenian (Western Ukraine).
Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), especially a full sequence, yields a "deeper" ancestry, thousands of years ago. However, I did luck out with a complete match in a nearby village of Piekeilnik. But, again there is no paper trail and no matching surnames; kinship exists but as yet is undetermined. My paternal grandmother's mtDNA is matched by someone in the Ukraine.
A recent study states that in the past 1000 years all Europeans are one big happy family, that is, they are related. That is not surprising to me since the European land mass is not that large, travel by foot, even across the seas, and over the mountains were surmountable obstacles. I am also not surprised that according to Family Tree DNA's Family Finder I am, genetically: from Europe, (Western European) Orcadian - 97.33%, and from South Asia, Southeast Indian, North Indian - 2.67% both with a ±0.53% margin of error! No kidding, since I thought I was 100% Eastern European Slav. Notwithstanding that no kinfolks have emerged from all the DNA testing that I have funded, I am delighted with the results. Everything is in the FTDNA's data base and with more people, more data, there will be more chances to find kinship links.
So if you have the money, the curiousity, and understand that DNA tests may not give you the immediate gratification of finding kinfolk - go for it. We will all learn so much from all this testing.
As for my Western European, Orcadian roots, some research provided the following information, "FamilyTreeDNA's (FTDNA) autosomal DNA tests use the Human Genetic Diversity Project (HGDP) at the University of Stanford to provide the reference groups for their population studies." (Sorry, I did not copy the address of this blog, so the text follows.)
Dr. Bruce Winney of the Department of Oncology at the University of Oxford is a coordinator
of the “People of British Isles” study which is itself a component of the HGDP.
He wrote:
. . . the HGDP doesn't really make a good set of reference populations for Europe. However, we are hoping that with our project and collaborations, better possibilities are in the way, although I do suspect it will take a year or so before we get there. You may want to keep an eye on our website (www.peopleofthebritishisles.org ), where we will make available a really interesting paper that we are writing at the moment.
A fascinating preliminary paper is here http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/article ...
ool=pubmed (The Orcadian population is thought to be a mixture of Norse Vikings and,
mostly, the Ancient British.1, 28 Because our Norse population surrogate was based on
limited published Norwegian data, we used only a subset of the autosomal data (HLA-A, -B, -
C, -DQB1, MC1R and rs7853989) for the admixture analysis. The source populations were the
South Western set, as before as a proxy for Ancient British ancestry, and published
Norwegian (or Swedish) data as a proxy for Norse Viking ancestry. The estimate of Norse
ancestry was 0.375 (0.331–0.419) for the local surnames, rising just slightly to 0.405
(0.357–0.453) when non-local surnames were used at the highest stringency. These
estimates were 0.315 (0.266–0.364) and 0.420 (0.375–0.465) at a lower stringency. The
NRY estimate of Norse ancestry was 1.000 (0.139–1.000), again with a very wide CI.
We repeated the analysis on the Orcadian samples using the Eastern set instead of Norway.
This comparison showed a lower admixture from the East for the local than the non-local
samples, especially using the less stringent criteria. This may well be because the non-local
samples are ‘contaminated' with some Viking admixture, although possibly mainly from the
Danish Vikings, who must have been very closely related to the Anglo-Saxons as they came
from essentially the same geographical area. Using the most stringent criteria for local, the
estimates of admixture from West versus East and Norse versus West match remarkably well,
suggesting in both cases a nearly 50% contribution from Ancient British to Orcadian ancestry,
with a likely higher Norse contribution from males than females. There can be no doubt that
the admixture analysis is much more sensitive for the detection of population structure in
these rather closely related populations, and that the use of local surnames, does affect the
analysis and helps to create a finer population subdivision.)
I guess this just reinforces that we are at the cutting edge of the science. At the present
time, “Orcadian” is, in this context only, thus no more than a fairly poor surrogate for the
British Isles.]
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Another site offering insights about the Orcadians is
THE ORCADIANS
A Relic Population of Picts http://hal_macgregor.tripod.com/gregor/Orcadians.html
This statement from this site, really has changed my entire perspective on where I came from
and who I am: Orcadian (Pict) dna is closest to that of eastern Europeans, namely Russians,
whose founders were early Swedish Vikings.
Carolyn
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