Wednesday, May 13, 2015
Sharing DNA From Our Mutual Ancestors
Nadene Goldfoot
I am an amateur genealogist and now interested in our DNA. I originally tested with 23&Me. My family has tested with FTDNA where I also transferred my results. We have 23 pairs of Chromosomes, making a set from our mother and another set from our father, 46 pairs altogether. The 23rd is the SEX chromosome. A female has XX and a male has XY. Chromosome 1 has the most known genes of 2,968. The Y chromosome has the fewest, only 231. Our human DNA of A,G,C,T is made of 3,147 million chemical nucleotide bases. Almost all are exactly the same in all people, and 97% are the same as the chimpanzee. So, it's that other 3% that is so important. That's what we fight within ourselves sometimes, that animal instinct.
Genealogy is the study of all the people who are our ancestors. Scientists who are geneticists have found that women, or our MT DNA go back to Mitochondrial Eve who lived about 150,000 years ago. They haven't been able to trace man back that far from our own cells, but find the Y chromosome Adam lived between 60,000 and 90,000 years ago!
If you try to trace your own ancestors and can go back 10 generations ago, which we figure 25 years per generation, you go back 250 years ago to 1765. If all your ancestors lived in the USA or England, it's pretty easy to do with the help of websites today such as http://ancestry.com . Doing that, you
would find your grandparents adding up to 512 from your mother and 512 from your father totalling 1,024 ancestors on your tree
.
I've taken the DNA test, familyfinder with familytreedna located in Houston, Texas, and I've taken the the test with 23&Me located in L.A., California. They are both autosomal DNA tests, meaning that other people who have taken this test are compared with me and the company finds those that have matches-pieces of genes that you both share. This means you have common ancestors. It's very exciting, because even though we have so many genealogical ancestors, that doesn't mean we get a piece of all their chromosomes. A scientist explained that out of 1,024 genealogical ancestors, we probably only get the dna from about 43 of them. So yes, we, through our family tree, seem to be connected to the whole world, but not genetically.
Some of us are really into genealogy and as a by-product today, our DNA. Our Bible started with the genealogy of our origins. In the USA, probably the people who had family that came over on the Mayflower ship in 1620 started the interest in keeping their trees. Then the American Revolution ancestors kept their trees and got into a group called the DAR, Daughters of the American Revolution. That got the rest of us interested. Who were our ancestors?
I have had my brother, son, and 3 cousins and myself tested with FTDNA. I found some interesting results today.
My female cousin on my father's side has 531 matches of different people.
I have 331 matches
My brother has 300 matches.
My son has 205 matches.
My male cousin on my mother's side has 59 matches.
My male 2nd cousin on my father's side would have less than 531 but the amount is unknown to me. I manage everyone's results except his. He is able to do it himself.
I checked on 23&ME and see that I have 1,024 matches! Some, like me, have also transferred their findings to FTDNA as well. Once you get into the findings of these tests, you are hooked! I know one person who has tested with all the companies because each one gives a few different special facts they are known for, or present it in different ways that are so interesting. 23&Me is known for giving our health results as well. Many go there just for that purpose and ignore the genealogy aspect which bugs the heck out of those like me who only want the genealogy and are closely related to them without being able to make a connection because our emails are ignored.
You will be able to get DNA from all of your 16 gggrandparents, and then only about 54% of all 32 of your ggggrandparents. Then there is a slim chance of getting dna from your 64 gggggrandparents. You go back 5 generations or 125 years to 1890 and it's hard to have any amount of dna from them.
Being I am an Ashkenazi Jewish lady, I have found out that if we go back 30 generations or 750 years ago to the year 1265, we will find we Ashkenazi Jews are all related to each other, but of course we won't have all of the chromosomes. Maybe a few cMs, though.
While I'm talking about that, the amazing thing is that through learning how to do triangulation of dna, one of my DNA relatives has found that a number of us share enough DNA on just the right places of our chromosomes and this means that we are all connected to the Rabbi of Worms, and my line is connected to Rabbi Wertheimer. The exciting thing is that this connects us to Rashi, famous in our history as he was a biblical commentator listed in our prayer books, and he, of course was connected to King David. Abraham, our genealogy father, only goes back to the 2nd millennium BCE, which would be about 4,000 BCE.
Also found is that we Ashkenazi Jews come from only 4 women due to bottlenecks. That's where "A population bottleneck (or genetic bottleneck) is a sharp reduction in the size of a population due to environmental events (such as earthquakes, floods, fires, disease, or droughts) or human activities (such as genocide). Such events can reduce the variation in the gene pool of a population; thereafter, a smaller population (of animals/people) with a correspondingly smaller genetic diversity, remains to pass on genes to future generations of offspring." We must have had a whopper to be down to tracing back to only 4 women. Of course, the Holocaust was one whopper of a bottleneck, I would think. Perhaps the worst.
Here's a source on the 4 women. " In 2006, a study by Behar et al.,[119] based on what was at that time high-resolution analysis of haplogroup K (mtDNA), suggested that about 40% of the current Ashkenazi population is descended matrilineally from just four women, or "founder lineages", that were "likely from a Hebrew/ Levantine mtDNA pool" originating in the Middle East in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE. Additionally, Behar et al. suggested that the rest of Ashkenazi mtDNA is originated from ~150 women, and that most of those were also likely of Middle Eastern origin.[119] In reference specifically to Haplogroup K, they suggested that although it is common throughout western Eurasia, "the observed global pattern of distribution renders very unlikely the possibility that the four aforementioned founder lineages entered the Ashkenazi mtDNA pool via gene flow from a European host population". ***
"A 2014 study by Fernández et al. has found that Ashkenazi Jews display a frequency of haplogroup K in their mtDNA that suggests an ancient Near Eastern origin. Stating that this observation clearly contradicts the results of the study led by Richards that suggested a European source for 3 exclusively Ashkenazi K lineages." Yes, there are those who have tried to say that we Ashkenazi women ancestors were all from Europe, and mainly from Khazaria, but that just doesn't seem to be the case, though of course we have more European women in our midst than the Sephardi or Mizrachi women. Not the men, though. Jewish men's male ancestors were from the Middle East with a very high %.
The non Middle Eastern DNA we Ashkenazi s carry in our Mtdna seem to have come mostly from the Roman connection in the early days as either as slaves or in the period when Jerusalem fell in 70 CE and going through Rome was the path out of the area. This led to going into France and then Germany and much later on up to eastern Europe in to the Russian area.
This leads me to my mother's side where I must mention that through a genealogical connection, not a DNA connection -yet- the family is connected to the Queen of Scots and all that Royal family. My mother had always asked if I had connected her to any royalty yet, and sadly, I did after she had passed away. She just knew she had to have royal blood!
Here is the mindblowing facts that amazed me this morning. We get the Y chromosome from our fathers who get it from their fathers, and we get the mt chromosome from our mothers who got it from their mothers. DNA is not passed down as whole chromosomes of which we each have 23. Recombination happens in which chromosomes come together and swap DNA. This mixes up the DNA and lets you have DNA from more than your genetic ancestors.
Recombination rates vary from person to person, and especially between genders. There is more recombination in women than in men. Women are slightly more closely related to our maternal line, our mother's mother, our mother's maternal grandmother, etc. So we are less likely to be related to our paternal line of our father's father and his father's grandfather, etc. We women are about 30% more likely to be genetically related to our maternal line ancestor 10 generations ago than we are to our paternal line ancestor. The difference in probability is 14% vs 11%.
It's hard to go by this probability. My male cousin from my mother's side shares 929.99 cMs with my brother and a whopping 957.07cMs with me! He shares 641.43 cMs with my son! A cM is a length of chromosome segment, like an inch only much much much smaller.
Results from DNA companies come back with another kind of result. It's the SNPs and will have a huge number after them. They are markers with only 2 values meaning that they have mutated only once in human history. Each SNP is traced to a single common ancestor where the SNP first appeared. That's how they found our Adam and Eve. Now the company of 23&Me can tell you what % of DNA from Neanderthal or Denisovan Man you have. That goes back even farther. A female bone found goes back 50,000 years of a Neanderthal. They originated in Europe and range from 39,000 to 125,000 years ago. I have 2.9% of Neanderthal. Denisovans were first found in Siberia. In March 2010, scientists announced the discovery of a finger bone fragment of a juvenile female who lived about 41,000 years ago, found in the remote Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains in Siberia, a cave which has also been inhabited by Neanderthals and modern humans. Analysis indicated that modern humans, Neanderthals, and the Denisova hominin last shared a common ancestor around 1 million years ago. So, SNPs are used to define our haplogroups. Our haplogroups are a population group defined by specific SNP mutations.
My father's mother's haplogroup is MT-W. W is for Wilma.
My father's father's haplogroup is Y-Q1b1a.
My mother's mother's haplogroup is MT-H2a1.
My mother's father's haplogroup is Y-R1b1a2a1a1b4 or R-L21.
( Pretty good. I did this all from memory.)
Reference Genetic Genealogist Blaine Bettinger in Q&A post
Book: DNA & Genealogy by Colleen Fitzpatrick & Andrew Yeiser
http://goldfoot_genealogy.blogspot.com
http://wwwrobinsongenealogy.blogspot.com
http://henwoodgenealogy.blogspot.com
http://news.discovery.com/human/evolution/are-you-related-to-neanderthals-photos-131218.htm
http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Neanderthal.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denisovan
Abraham's Children by Jon Entine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck
http://www.mhrc.net/mitochondrialEve.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jews ***
http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2015/05/our-bible-wealth-of-jewish-genealogy.html
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2010/01/jewish-genes-what-haplogroup-could-they.html
I see Bettinger has a course starting from FamilyTree University. :
I am an amateur genealogist and now interested in our DNA. I originally tested with 23&Me. My family has tested with FTDNA where I also transferred my results. We have 23 pairs of Chromosomes, making a set from our mother and another set from our father, 46 pairs altogether. The 23rd is the SEX chromosome. A female has XX and a male has XY. Chromosome 1 has the most known genes of 2,968. The Y chromosome has the fewest, only 231. Our human DNA of A,G,C,T is made of 3,147 million chemical nucleotide bases. Almost all are exactly the same in all people, and 97% are the same as the chimpanzee. So, it's that other 3% that is so important. That's what we fight within ourselves sometimes, that animal instinct.
 |
| My high school graduation picture at the age of 16. I was 17 in September |
Genealogy is the study of all the people who are our ancestors. Scientists who are geneticists have found that women, or our MT DNA go back to Mitochondrial Eve who lived about 150,000 years ago. They haven't been able to trace man back that far from our own cells, but find the Y chromosome Adam lived between 60,000 and 90,000 years ago!
 |
| Mother: Mildred Robinson |
If you try to trace your own ancestors and can go back 10 generations ago, which we figure 25 years per generation, you go back 250 years ago to 1765. If all your ancestors lived in the USA or England, it's pretty easy to do with the help of websites today such as http://ancestry.com . Doing that, you
 |
| Paternal Aunt Ann, Grandmother Zlata Goldfoot, cousin Harriett |
.jpg) |
| Father: Maurice Goldfoot and myself |
 |
| Grandmother Zlata "Hattie" Goldfoot |
 |
| Maurice Goldfoot when a pro boxer |
 |
| maternal grandfather with his father Frank Hugh Robinson and Abiathar Robinson |
 |
| grandfather Nathan Goldfoot |
 |
| Maternal grandmother, Augusta Gustafson |
 |
| Maternal Grandma's brother, Johaan Gustafson |
 |
| Frank Robinson, brother Arthur |
Some of us are really into genealogy and as a by-product today, our DNA. Our Bible started with the genealogy of our origins. In the USA, probably the people who had family that came over on the Mayflower ship in 1620 started the interest in keeping their trees. Then the American Revolution ancestors kept their trees and got into a group called the DAR, Daughters of the American Revolution. That got the rest of us interested. Who were our ancestors?
I have had my brother, son, and 3 cousins and myself tested with FTDNA. I found some interesting results today.
My female cousin on my father's side has 531 matches of different people.
I have 331 matches
My brother has 300 matches.
My son has 205 matches.
My male cousin on my mother's side has 59 matches.
My male 2nd cousin on my father's side would have less than 531 but the amount is unknown to me. I manage everyone's results except his. He is able to do it himself.
I checked on 23&ME and see that I have 1,024 matches! Some, like me, have also transferred their findings to FTDNA as well. Once you get into the findings of these tests, you are hooked! I know one person who has tested with all the companies because each one gives a few different special facts they are known for, or present it in different ways that are so interesting. 23&Me is known for giving our health results as well. Many go there just for that purpose and ignore the genealogy aspect which bugs the heck out of those like me who only want the genealogy and are closely related to them without being able to make a connection because our emails are ignored.
You will be able to get DNA from all of your 16 gggrandparents, and then only about 54% of all 32 of your ggggrandparents. Then there is a slim chance of getting dna from your 64 gggggrandparents. You go back 5 generations or 125 years to 1890 and it's hard to have any amount of dna from them.
Being I am an Ashkenazi Jewish lady, I have found out that if we go back 30 generations or 750 years ago to the year 1265, we will find we Ashkenazi Jews are all related to each other, but of course we won't have all of the chromosomes. Maybe a few cMs, though.
While I'm talking about that, the amazing thing is that through learning how to do triangulation of dna, one of my DNA relatives has found that a number of us share enough DNA on just the right places of our chromosomes and this means that we are all connected to the Rabbi of Worms, and my line is connected to Rabbi Wertheimer. The exciting thing is that this connects us to Rashi, famous in our history as he was a biblical commentator listed in our prayer books, and he, of course was connected to King David. Abraham, our genealogy father, only goes back to the 2nd millennium BCE, which would be about 4,000 BCE.
Also found is that we Ashkenazi Jews come from only 4 women due to bottlenecks. That's where "A population bottleneck (or genetic bottleneck) is a sharp reduction in the size of a population due to environmental events (such as earthquakes, floods, fires, disease, or droughts) or human activities (such as genocide). Such events can reduce the variation in the gene pool of a population; thereafter, a smaller population (of animals/people) with a correspondingly smaller genetic diversity, remains to pass on genes to future generations of offspring." We must have had a whopper to be down to tracing back to only 4 women. Of course, the Holocaust was one whopper of a bottleneck, I would think. Perhaps the worst.
Here's a source on the 4 women. " In 2006, a study by Behar et al.,[119] based on what was at that time high-resolution analysis of haplogroup K (mtDNA), suggested that about 40% of the current Ashkenazi population is descended matrilineally from just four women, or "founder lineages", that were "likely from a Hebrew/ Levantine mtDNA pool" originating in the Middle East in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE. Additionally, Behar et al. suggested that the rest of Ashkenazi mtDNA is originated from ~150 women, and that most of those were also likely of Middle Eastern origin.[119] In reference specifically to Haplogroup K, they suggested that although it is common throughout western Eurasia, "the observed global pattern of distribution renders very unlikely the possibility that the four aforementioned founder lineages entered the Ashkenazi mtDNA pool via gene flow from a European host population". ***
"A 2014 study by Fernández et al. has found that Ashkenazi Jews display a frequency of haplogroup K in their mtDNA that suggests an ancient Near Eastern origin. Stating that this observation clearly contradicts the results of the study led by Richards that suggested a European source for 3 exclusively Ashkenazi K lineages." Yes, there are those who have tried to say that we Ashkenazi women ancestors were all from Europe, and mainly from Khazaria, but that just doesn't seem to be the case, though of course we have more European women in our midst than the Sephardi or Mizrachi women. Not the men, though. Jewish men's male ancestors were from the Middle East with a very high %.
The non Middle Eastern DNA we Ashkenazi s carry in our Mtdna seem to have come mostly from the Roman connection in the early days as either as slaves or in the period when Jerusalem fell in 70 CE and going through Rome was the path out of the area. This led to going into France and then Germany and much later on up to eastern Europe in to the Russian area.
This leads me to my mother's side where I must mention that through a genealogical connection, not a DNA connection -yet- the family is connected to the Queen of Scots and all that Royal family. My mother had always asked if I had connected her to any royalty yet, and sadly, I did after she had passed away. She just knew she had to have royal blood!
 |
| My high school reunion picnic picture, a recent one |
Recombination rates vary from person to person, and especially between genders. There is more recombination in women than in men. Women are slightly more closely related to our maternal line, our mother's mother, our mother's maternal grandmother, etc. So we are less likely to be related to our paternal line of our father's father and his father's grandfather, etc. We women are about 30% more likely to be genetically related to our maternal line ancestor 10 generations ago than we are to our paternal line ancestor. The difference in probability is 14% vs 11%.
It's hard to go by this probability. My male cousin from my mother's side shares 929.99 cMs with my brother and a whopping 957.07cMs with me! He shares 641.43 cMs with my son! A cM is a length of chromosome segment, like an inch only much much much smaller.
My father's mother's haplogroup is MT-W. W is for Wilma.
My father's father's haplogroup is Y-Q1b1a.
My mother's mother's haplogroup is MT-H2a1.
My mother's father's haplogroup is Y-R1b1a2a1a1b4 or R-L21.
( Pretty good. I did this all from memory.)
Reference Genetic Genealogist Blaine Bettinger in Q&A post
Book: DNA & Genealogy by Colleen Fitzpatrick & Andrew Yeiser
http://goldfoot_genealogy.blogspot.com
http://wwwrobinsongenealogy.blogspot.com
http://henwoodgenealogy.blogspot.com
http://news.discovery.com/human/evolution/are-you-related-to-neanderthals-photos-131218.htm
http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Neanderthal.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denisovan
Abraham's Children by Jon Entine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck
http://www.mhrc.net/mitochondrialEve.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jews ***
http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2015/05/our-bible-wealth-of-jewish-genealogy.html
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2010/01/jewish-genes-what-haplogroup-could-they.html
I see Bettinger has a course starting from FamilyTree University. :
Labels: allele testing, chromosomes, dna, genealogy, Goldfoot, King David, Queen of Scots, Robinson
