The Genetic Genealogist

I’ve been playing with 23andMe’s Relative Finder this week, since it’s now in open beta.  It’s been interesting hearing from 6th to 10th cousins from around the world, and we’re working to find ancestors in common.  I’m looking forward to identifying – for the first time – a piece of autosomal DNA that came from a specific ancestor.

While in the beta period, the number of relatives is limited to 1000 (I currently have 173 with only 5 in the 3rd to 7th cousin range), and you can only contact other people who have opted in for the beta test. So if you have a 23andMe account, please opt in to the beta test via the following instructions (kind provided by Ann Turner):

1. Open the page https://www.23andme.com/user/profile/  and check the checkbox near “Name:” and click on the blue “Save Changes” button.

2. Open the page https://www.23andme.com/user/edit/privacy/  and UNcheck the checkbox near “I do not want to receive sharing invitations from anyone.”

3. Open the page https://www.23andme.com/you/relfinder/  and check the checkbox near “Highlight my profile in Relative Finder to show that I’m interested in making connections with potential relatives.”

Extended Profiles

Ann also wisely suggested expanding your profile to include information that will help other users find a genealogical connection.  Since the profiles are searchable by keyword, and she recommends including any special interests (regional/ethnic/etc) in the profile.  Like Ann, I included information about my genealogy back to 6 generations in my profile.  Hopefully it will help my genetic relatives find a match.

Success Stories

Lastly, if you have any success stories using Relative Finder, please leave a comment below or email me.  I’m always looking to highlight success stories or learn more about how an autosomal matching service can help people in their research.

Posted via web from Blaine Bettinger’s Lifestream

Posted via web from Blaine Bettinger’s Lifestream

ISOGG, the International Society of Genetic Genealogy, has a “Success Stories” page where it posts short summaries of just a few the many successes that genetic genealogy has helped people achieve.  Today I noticed that there are several new summaries regarding “Autosomal DNA Successes,” both of which were the result of 23andMe’s new Relative Finder (currently still in beta testing).

Relative Finder

As I recently wrote, Relative Finder is a feature at 23andMe that allows users to compare their autosomal DNA to the autosomal DNA of others to potentially find cousins.  This has long been done with Y-DNA and mtDNA, but this is one of the first times this has been done with autosomal DNA.

Success Story #1

The first success story is from someone who used Relative Finder to identify a huge number of potential cousins.  After connecting one of his or her potential 4th cousins, the individuals discovered that they have similar surnames from a certain location in common (in addition to DNA on chromosomes 3 and 10).  This individual also wisely noted that s/he now has “a good idea of the path that two of my DNA segments took through my pedigree to get to me.”  This is something I wrote about recently in “The Future of Genetic Genealogy – Tracing DNA To Individual Ancestors.”

Success Story #2 – A First?

The second success story is about two Relative Finder users who worked together to identify a line that they had in common, potentially identifying segments of DNA passed to them from a couple who were born in the 1730’s.  This is a very interesting result, and I wonder if it is the first time that genealogists have identified a segment of DNA that they inherited from distant autosomal ancestors (i.e. not their Y-DNA or mtDNA lines) outside of the medical realm.

Conclusion

I know I’ve mentioned this a great deal lately, but I again emphasize that geneticists and genealogists will be seeing much more of this type of success story in the future.

In the May 2010 issue of Family Tree Magazine, the editors will name the 40 Best Genealogy Blogs.  Last month many of my readers nominated this blog for the list, which I appreciate greatly!

As of today you can vote to narrow down the top 130 nominated blogs to about 80 blogs, which the editors will then reduce to 40.  The blogs have been placed into 10 different categories.  There is more information about the categories and blogs here.

If you have a moment, please feel free to vote for The Genetic Genealogist in the genetic genealogy category!  Voting takes place from October 5th through November 5th, and you can vote as often as you like.  Thank you!

23andMe has been beta testing a new tool for comparing autosomal DNA results called “Relative Finder.” Although I was not one of the beta testers, it seems that this new tool will be of great use to genealogists. Roberta Estes has posted a nice summary of the Relative Finder tool at the “Searching for the Lost Colony DNA Blog.”

90% of Customers Likely to Find a Match!

Relative Finder compares your autosomal SNP results to the results of others in the 23andMe database to determine matches. While developing the tool, 23andMe discovered that in their dataset of “more than 5000 individuals with European ancestry,” 90% of individuals had at least one distant relative between 2nd and 8th degree cousins!

Other Uses

Beyond identifying distant relatives, the tool will potentially have many other uses. For example, one individual has already used SNP testing and comparison of 6 cousins to determine the approximate chromosomal location of an autosomal dominant hereditary condition!

The ASHG Abstract

Below is 23andMe’s abstract for the upcoming 2009 ASHG (American Society of Human Genetics) meeting regarding the Relative Finder tool:

Discovering Distant Relatives within a Diverse Set of Populations Using DNA Segments Identical by Descent.

L. Hon, B.M. Henn, J.M. Macpherson, N. Eriksson, A. Wojcicki, L. Avey, S. Saxonov, J.L. Mountain. 23andMe, Inc, Mountain View, CA.

“Close familial relationships, such a parent-offspring relationships, are inferred readily from genotype and allele frequency data for a limited number of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) or short tandem repeat (STR) polymorphisms. However, researchers have not focused on accurately inferring the degree of relationship between individuals who share a common ancestor 3-10 generations ago; such inference requires high density genome-wide information not available until recently. In order to characterize relatively distant relationships for a sample, we analyzed the sharing of DNA identical by descent (IBD) in a large database of self-selected individuals of European ancestry, including a subset identified as Ashkenazim. Individuals from more endogamous ethnic populations, such as the Ashkenazim, share on average more DNA identically by descent than do individuals of Asian ancestry or of European ancestry broadly defined. Extensive population level sharing of identical genomic segments complicates the prediction of relationship level for a pair of individuals since identical segments may reflect common ancestry older than the most recent ancestor for a pair of individuals in a pedigree. In order to understand the pattern of the observed population-level sharing, we simulated extended pedigrees using different populations to calculate the expected amounts of sharing for 1st through 10th cousins. Specifically we assessed the relationship between the length of the longest segment and the most recent common ancestor. From the simulations, we also determined bounds for predicted cousinships given a specific amount of segmental sharing. Using these bounds as a guide, we detected at least one distant relative, between 2nd-8th degree cousin, for 90% of individuals in our dataset of more than 5000 individuals with European ancestry. An even higher fraction of our Ashkenazi sample, 99%, had at least one distant relative between 2nd-7th degree cousinship in our dataset.”