DNA ancestry test

[rowan]

Anyone done this? How's it done? How much did it cost? & what did the results tell you? I've been hearing a lot about this and recently found out there is a genetic testing center just off one of the streets I walk along to work every day. Despite my Hong Kong birth and NZ-upbringing, I'm pretty sure all my ancestry goes back to North-West & Central Europe, with the possibility of Spanish several generations back on the maternal side.

[morepork]

Not sure what you mean by genetic testing centre, but if it is a medical facility it will be restricted to specific panels for congenital disorders. For about US$200 23 and Me will perform a haplotype analysis from a saliva sample that you send through the post.

[Spy]

I did this recently through ancestry.com, which has more of a "What are your roots" than a "What are you going to die from" angle.

No massive surprises:
Great Britain 60%
Scandinavia 17%
Ireland/Scotland/Wales 15%
Iberian Peninsula 6%
European Jewish 1%

It was interesting in that there was much less Irish than expected. I have no known Scandinavian heritage, so maybe that's Danelaw-era DNA that's come down through the centuries, or maybe there's something unknown more recent. There was a family myth about having Spanish blood from sailors wrecked off the Irish coast from the Armada, which may or may not be the source of the Iberian Peninsula DNA. Anyway, it was pretty interesting to get the results.

Spit in a jar and send it off. Cost was $99, I think, but whether that was NZD or AUD I'm not totally sure.

[Lizard]

How can they have separate "Great Britain" and "Ireland/Scotland/Wales" categories?

[Spy]

How can they have separate "Great Britain" and "Ireland/Scotland/Wales" categories?

The designations are a bit strange. On the map, “Great Britain” seems to be England south of the Midlands and a strip of northern France. “Ireland/Scotland/Wales” is the rest of Britain. Poorly named, I agree.

I’ll see if I can post a screenshot of the map at some stage.

[rowan]

Thanks for the responses. I'll check in at that genetic testing center anyway, to see if they can do it, and if not I might give Ancestry.com a try. Certainly a bit strange providing results by nationality, as nations and ethnicity are very different things, of course. Ireland and Scotland are considered to be a mix of Celtic and Norseman, from what I understand, whereas the English are of predominantly Germanic stock (including Jutes of mainland Denmark), according to a report I read a few years back. Iberia is very mixed, of course, with substantial North African admixture throughout the southern half of the peninsula, but almost none at all north of Madrid. The European Jewish 1% is interesting because the Jews are followers of a religion, not a race. There are Chinese Jews, Ethiopian Jews and practically everything in between. You can both convert to and renounce the religion, and of course you must convert if wishing to marry a Jew inside of Israel. European Jews can also be divided into two distinct categories, Ashkenazi and Sephardic. Israeli scholars such as Schlomo Sands suggest Judaism was brought to Eastern and Northern Europe from the Caspian Sea region during medieval times, though this remains controversial. Sephardic Jews appear to have arrived in Spain with the Moors.

[morepork]

How can they have separate "Great Britain" and "Ireland/Scotland/Wales" categories?

They can't. The wave of migration that gave rise to that haplotype is applicable to the Isles in general.

[morepork]

Thanks for the responses. I'll check in at that genetic testing center anyway, to see if they can do it, and if not I might give Ancestry.com a try. Certainly a bit strange providing results by nationality, as nations and ethnicity are very different things, of course. Ireland and Scotland are considered to be a mix of Celtic and Norseman, from what I understand, whereas the English are of predominantly Germanic stock (including Jutes of mainland Denmark), according to a report I read a few years back. Iberia is very mixed, of course, with substantial North African admixture throughout the southern half of the peninsula, but almost none at all north of Madrid. The European Jewish 1% is interesting because the Jews are followers of a religion, not a race. There are Chinese Jews, Ethiopian Jews and practically everything in between. You can both convert to and renounce the religion, and of course you must convert if wishing to marry a Jew inside of Israel. European Jews can also be divided into two distinct categories, Ashkenazi and Sephardic. Israeli scholars such as Schlomo Sands suggest Judaism was brought to Eastern and Northern Europe from the Caspian Sea region during medieval times, though this remains controversial. Sephardic Jews appear to have arrived in Spain with the Moors.

Ashkenazi and Spehardic have very distinct genetic signatures. Can easily identify them. Bear in mind haplogroup designations are geographic, not ethnic.

[Galfon]

The latest terminologies for UK are confusing based on previous assumptions but reflect that a distinct English/Anglo Saxon population doesn't exist ..
so 'British' means Anglo-Saxon ancestry
and 'Irish' ( or Irish/Welsh/Scottish ) means Celtic.
N.Western Europe is a different group again.
Here's some links to interesting articles:

https://www.ancestry.com/corporate/inte ... s-we-think

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-18489735

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/uk-wal ... s-14173910

So Wales is split N & S (with Eng in Pembroke & a pocket of Eastern Med dna in Clwyd!)..Tacitus likened S Walians to Iberians in appearance.
Geordies are most Irish of the English and Yorkies most Anglo-Saxon.
Apart from NW Wales & Ireland it's a mixed bag all over, with less 'Viking' dna than expected.

The spit in a bag thing with Ancestry produced surprises for some colleagues in the office.

[rowan]

In Ireland you can see two distinct physical types - the generally shorter and darker Celts, and the fair-headed, freckle-faced descendants of Norsemen. The Vikings, of course, raided the island frequently and actually founded the city of Dublin. Not sure what the exact Celtic-Norsemen ratio is, but I'd guess pretty close to 50-50. The interesting thing about the Celts is that they originated in Central Europe before being replaced by the Germanic tribes migrating from further north and eastward. Possibly they have some relationship to Mediterranean peoples, given the physical similarity, but certainly it must have been in pre-Roman times, as there is no linguistic connection. Aside from the British Isles, they also migrated to Spain (esp. Galicia) and Turkey - where they were the first people to make Ankara their capital.

NB: In Scotland Clan Gunn in the North, Clan MacDonald of the Isles and Clan MacLeod in the west, and other Clans such as MacQueen and MacAulay are of Viking or mixed Scottish-Viking origin.

[morepork]

The latest terminologies for UK are confusing based on previous assumptions but reflect that a distinct English/Anglo Saxon population doesn't exist ..
so 'British' means Anglo-Saxon ancestry
and 'Irish' ( or Irish/Welsh/Scottish ) means Celtic.
N.Western Europe is a different group again.
Here's some links to interesting articles:

https://www.ancestry.com/corporate/inte ... s-we-think

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-18489735

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/uk-wal ... s-14173910

So Wales is split N & S (with Eng in Pembroke & a pocket of Eastern Med dna in Clwyd!)..Tacitus likened S Walians to Iberians in appearance.
Geordies are most Irish of the English and Yorkies most Anglo-Saxon.
Apart from NW Wales & Ireland it's a mixed bag all over, with less 'Viking' dna than expected.

The spit in a bag thing with Ancestry produced surprises for some colleagues in the office.

These reference analyses used Y-chromosome DNA markers that are more "prominent" in a data base that are less heterogeneous in a diploid genome on account of the fact that the entire chromosome is passed on to only one gender via sexual recombination. Ditto mitochondrial DNA, which is exclusively maternal in origin (Y chromosomes only come from sperm, mitochondrial DNA only from eggs, the complete diploid genome being a product of recombination of both X and Y....X chromosome alleles can be inherited both maternally and paternally, hence twice the variables upon recombination). Ancestry.com and other like services rely on a combination of the volume of reference material and the technological ability to distinguish the gender of origin. Autosomal data bases (the sum of DNA from both sexes in the recombinant process) are significantly larger and more comprehensively characterized than sex-specific DNA, and so the variance determining statistical power in an analysis is relatively smaller in the autosomal database simply because you can shotgun the entire genome without having to account for gender origin as a confounding variable. If you cleave the entire genome with a shotgun approach you lose the ability to distinguish autosomal from sex-specific sequence data (to a certain extent, depending on the reliability of the reference database). If you can separate mitochondria from the raw sample, or Y chromosomes, before you shotgun, you don't have to deal with pesky confounding variables. This is labour and cost intensive, which is why I suspect commercial services like ancestry.com have abandoned the service, at least in the context of a flat fee for services rendered. (https://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/201 ... dna-tests/).

If you have a static geographically defined population like the smelly Welsh, you can adjust an algorithm to counter diaspora (somewhat). For us far flung colonials, the power of that counter is diminished because our forebears have settled outside of the valleys. Different algorithm required.

[rowan]

Possibly they have some relationship to Mediterranean peoples

There is another theory that people akin to those in the Mediterranean region were in the British Isles before the Celts, and were therefore the original inhabitants. Hybridization with the newcomers thus led to the short, dark variety of Celts we associate with Ireland and Wales, in particular. In fact, I have a towering, blond-haired English friend who did the DNA test and was surprised to learn he was mostly of (Central European) Celtic stock.

[morepork]

You are missing the point. Spy is a fucking 100% bogan.

[Galfon]

Surely by now there's a suite of tasty algorithms that can be relied upon for medical or ethnology purposes ?- be it
Autosomal, X, mtDNA or Y, Haplotype....the full monty of over 6 Bill base pairs is quite numerous but I guess thay know where the key markers are. I don't know if the 0.1 % variation between peeps is broad spread across the whole genome or just some areas.
Yes Rowan, the Romans described Celts as tall,fair, long limbed, red hair and the Caledonians and North Walians of this appearance.
The shorter dark haired stock more evident in Wales, W Scotland, Cornwall, Brittany, Ireland you say - even Dudley may well be linked to an earlier pre-historic people travelling up from Iberia/Basque parts.
I would expect Bogan to be mucky brown (hair, that is..), and generally clumpy.

[rowan]

Surely by now there's a suite of tasty algorithms that can be relied upon for medical or ethnology purposes ?- be it
Autosomal, X, mtDNA or Y, Haplotype....the full monty of over 6 Bill base pairs is quite numerous but I guess thay know where the key markers are. I don't know if the 0.1 % variation between peeps is broad spread across the whole genome or just some areas.
Yes Rowan, the Romans described Celts as tall,fair, long limbed, red hair and the Caledonians and North Walians of this appearance.
The shorter dark haired stock more evident in Wales, W Scotland, Cornwall, Brittany, Ireland you say - even Dudley may well be linked to an earlier pre-historic people travelling up from Iberia/Basque parts.
I would expect Bogan to be mucky brown, and generally clumpy.

The mysterious shorter dark-haired peoples are sometimes referred to as Indo-European, but that is a linguistic term which actually includes the vast majority of Europeans and South Asians. I think what it is meant to imply is a South Asian origin, but for them to have been Indo-European that would mean this migration across the European continent to the British Isles must have occurred after the so-called Aryan invasion into South Asia, which occurred approximately four thousand years ago. The Aboriginals of South Asia were in fact ethnically akin to the Australian and Melanesian variety, and were part of the first major wave of homo sapiens out of Africa - migrating directly eastward along the tropical coastlines of Asia.

[Spy]

Only 99%. I'm 1% Jewish.

[rowan]

I'm 100% Atheist

[Galfon]

..That probably explains the denial of service you are receiving in your current situation
Rather than a large migration east to west, the Proto Indo Europeans are believed to have arisen N & E of the Black Sea and migrated in all directions over several thousand years (late Neolithic period), spreading a common culture, farming methods etc as well as the Indo-European languages.
Celts, Scandinavians, Mycenaean Greeks, Levant, N.India all in the scope of migration.
The Chechnyan involvement in the Syria/Iraq conflicts possibly has ethnic roots linked to this common ancestry.
Just gob into a bag, and send it off - I don't think there are markers for people from Atheistan yet so you won't get screened out.

[morepork]

Surely by now there's a suite of tasty algorithms that can be relied upon for medical or ethnology purposes ?- be it
Autosomal, X, mtDNA or Y, Haplotype....the full monty of over 6 Bill base pairs is quite numerous but I guess thay know where the key markers are. I don't know if the 0.1 % variation between peeps is broad spread across the whole genome or just some areas.
Yes Rowan, the Romans described Celts as tall,fair, long limbed, red hair and the Caledonians and North Walians of this appearance.
The shorter dark haired stock more evident in Wales, W Scotland, Cornwall, Brittany, Ireland you say - even Dudley may well be linked to an earlier pre-historic people travelling up from Iberia/Basque parts.
I would expect Bogan to be mucky brown (hair, that is..), and generally clumpy.

There are algorithms, but not all them would justify charging a fee for. Haplotype is the combination of alleles in an individual diploid genome, not so much specific markers.

[Galfon]

Haplotype relates to a single chromosome set yes ? so 'diploid genome' seems ambiguous - but I guess you can be looking at both sets as part of the same analysis.
Presumably you can be selective for haplotype checks and have to draw a line based on time/cost.
..which begs the question how much data is being trawled to produce the sweeping dramatic headlines like
' Bogans came out of Africa first and are in all our dna'.

[morepork]

Haplotype relates to a single chromosome set yes ? so 'diploid genome' seems ambiguous - but I guess you can be looking at both sets as part of the same analysis.
Presumably you can be selective for haplotype checks and have to draw a line based on time/cost.
..which begs the question how much data is being trawled to produce the sweeping dramatic headlines like
' Bogans came out of Africa first and are in all our dna'.

Haplotype = combination of alleles or single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) at a specific locus. Each (non-sex) cell in the body contains two of each autosomal chromosome (diploid). The genetic code is redundant (each amino acid can be encoded for by any 3 different codons) so any one gene can have subtle sequence differences between individuals that, in the absence of replication errors or mutation, will reflect the sequence information passed from mother and father. The more inbred the population, the more homogenous the combinations of alleles within individuals of that population (haplotype). Scale this logic up to the population level and you will see patterns that reflect migration, rape and pillage, etc.

Check these fuckers out:

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/2017072 ... c-disaster

[Galfon]

Cwikey - bet they didn't set out to be a full-scale disease lab.Some doods just can't help getting greedy and refuse to share..
The European royals showed this (inbreeding )big-time - probs. why they're bringing in commoners before it's too late.It's a reported problem to with Asian countries where arranged marriages prevails (cousins), where they practice polygamy too.Amish in US & Ashkenazi Jews have bottle-neck ancestry & closed communities.with known recessive gene conditions.
The Pitcairnians have done remarkably well all being considered!

[rowan]

..That probably explains the denial of service you are receiving in your current situation
Rather than a large migration east to west, the Proto Indo Europeans are believed to have arisen N & E of the Black Sea and migrated in all directions over several thousand years (late Neolithic period), spreading a common culture, farming methods etc as well as the Indo-European languages.
Celts, Scandinavians, Mycenaean Greeks, Levant, N.India all in the scope of migration.
The Chechnyan involvement in the Syria/Iraq conflicts possibly has ethnic roots linked to this common ancestry.
Just gob into a bag, and send it off - I don't think there are markers for people from Atheistan yet so you won't get screened out.

Am aware of all that, except the Chechnyan bit, which I doubt has anything to do with ethnicity and is more about the vast extent to which Islam actually spread during the height of the Arab, Seljuk and Ottoman Empires. The old Seljuk capital Samarkand was in fact based in Uzbekistan.

I think there is yet another theory about those mysterious dark-featured people who inhabited the British Isles before the Celts, and that is that they were not Indo-European speakers at all, but had come directly up the Atlantic coast of Europe from North Africa, and did so many thousands of years ago - predating the rise of the Indo-European speakers entirely. The Basques may also be a relic of that long forgotten era, and have somehow managed to retain there amazingly incomprehensible launguage through all those Roman, Germanic, Moorish and French invasions. But dark-featured they are not. Perhaps that's been bred out of them completely.

[Galfon]

Migration to the British Isles after the last Ice Age, several thousand years before the Celts, would have come from two routes - the land bridge to SE England
and by sea from Spain/France..
the latter most likely Basque type people, who are genetically linked to Kets people, Siberia.
More stuff on this..
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wale ... na-2281798

[rowan]

Interesting theory but it leaves a lot of questions. Firstly, the darker featured Iberians of the south are almost entirely a result of the 800-year Moorish occupation, which only concluded several hundred years ago. People north of Madrid, as mentioned, are physically very similar to northern Europeans, and this includes the Basques. There are exceptions, of course, but these can generally be attributed to more recent migrations from Andalusia to the industrial cities of Barcelona and Bilbao in the north. The Basques certainly look much more like northern Europeans than Andalusians, and no different to the Galicians on the Atlantic Coast - who do have Celtic ancestry, generally speaking. So linguistically the Basques may be related to the mysterious dark-featured 'aboriginals' of the British Isles, but ethnically I would be surprised if there's an significant connection. The native peoples of Siberia would be Asiatic, so I'm not sure on that one either.