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Saturday, 4 October 2014

Arts & Humanities: Genealogy: “Question: How long ago would an ancestor have to have lived in order to account for 0.1% of my genetic makeup?” plus 2 more

Arts & Humanities: Genealogy: “Question: How long ago would an ancestor have to have lived in order to account for 0.1% of my genetic makeup?” plus 2 more


Question: How long ago would an ancestor have to have lived in order to account for 0.1% of my genetic makeup?

Posted: 04 Oct 2014 05:15 PM PDT

I don't believe any of us can say. With the Autosomal DNA it is more complicated and doesn't have the exactitude of Y & Mitochondrial testing. Y & Mitochondrial are not used for the overall testing as you get each from only one person in each generation you go back. That means if you are a male you can have both tested but by the time you got back to your 32 great great great grandparents, 30 of them will be excluded from the results and if you are a female you could only have the Mitochondrial tested and 31 of them will be excluded from the results.

Autosomal you get 50-50 from both parents but when your parents passed on the Autosomal they received from their parents to you it sent through a process called "meiosis" where it was randomly jumbled and recombined. Therefore while you got 50% from your father's side and 50% from your mother's there usually will be a bias in what you inherited from grandmother and grandfather on both sides of the family. How you inherited any bias will not be how your siblings inherited it unless you have an identical twin. You have to understand the process of meiosis had been going on among all your ancestors going back to the beginning of humanity. If you have a full sibling and he/she was tested by the same company at the same time the results will not be exact. For example you might have received more Autosomal from an Italian grandfather and your sibling might have received more Autosomal from a Scottish grandmother. In other words while they show you only have 0.1% from a particular group, your siblings might have 10.0% from the same group. You can get anywhere from 0 to 50% of your Autosomal from any one grandparent. The gap usually isn't that wide but it isn't impossible. Also since there are no Haplogroups with Autosomal the only thing they can do is match you with population samples they have. Not every company has the same database of population samples. Therefore it have been reported if you go to more than one the results will not be the same. One might not have or be deficient in certain population groups another has and vice versa.
Therefore you should not take it as written in stone any percentages, fractions or pie charts they furnished you.

This type of testing is getting a lot of hype on TV and I believe many dingbat celebrities who really don't understand all that much what they received from the company that did the testing.

The X is a little strange. Both males and females get X from their mother. In addition a female gets X from her father. If you are a male you got X from your mother but whose X did she pass on to you, the X she got from her father or the X she got from her mother? There is no definite pattern.

Question: Which genealogy dna tests should I use?

Posted: 04 Oct 2014 08:41 AM PDT

No DNA test will tell you who your specific ancestors are. There are 4 types of DNA. Y, X, Autosomal and Mitochondrial.

Y is passed from father to son. Some females get Y but if you are a female and you have ovaries and a menstrual period, you are not one of them.

X is passed from mothers to both sons and daughters.

Autosomal is passed 50-50 from both parents but when your parents pass the Autosomal they received from their parents to you it went through a process of "Meoisis" where it was randomly jumbled and recombined. So while you got 50% from your mother's side and 50% from your father's, there usually will be a bias in what you inherited from grandmother and grandfather on both sides of the family. How you inherited any bias will not be how your siblings inherited it unless you have an identical twin. Autosomal is what most of your DNA is and it determines your "looks" genetically as well as alleles for health issues.

Mitochondrial some say is in the cytoplasm outside your cells and is passed from mother to both sons and daughters but only the daughters pass it to the next generation.

Now for years people have used Y & Mitochondrial testing in genealogy. With each they will assign you to a Haplogroup and show you the origin of your ancestors going way back. They have greater exactitude than Autosomal and X. However people get their Mitochondrial and their Y from only one person in each generation they go back. Since your ancestry doubles each generation this means, for example, by the time a person gets back to his 32 great great great grandparents, 30 of them will not be included in the results. For normal females since they only have Mitochondrial 31 of them will be excluded from the results.

Now with Autosomal testing there are no Haplogroups and the only thing companies can do is match you with population samples they have. Since they don't all have the same database of samples and one might not have or be deficient in certain population samples another has and vice versa, the results will vary from company to company. Also if you have a full sibling that uses the same company at the same time you do his/her results will not be the same. That is because, for example, you might have received more Autosomal from an Italian grandfather and your sibling might have received more Autosomal from a Scottish grandmother.

The X is somewhat complicated. A female gets X from both her parents and her son gets an X from her but there is no definite pattern as to whether he will get the X she got from her father or the X she got from her mother.

Now as far as companies, FamilyTreeDNA, Ancestry.Com and 23and me are the one most recommended.

However I feel DNA testing in isolation of traditional genealogy using documents/records is probably a waste of time and money.

With genealogy DNA testing if the company you use has cousin matches in their database they will advise you. Then if you contact them and the person wishes to cooperate you can collaborate information with them.

Question: Correct spelling of the last name poellinitz?

Posted: 03 Oct 2014 09:51 PM PDT

There isn't one.

People with Central and Eastern European names like this lived - and often still do live - in areas that are German-speaking, Polish-speaking, Russian-speaking, Czech-speaking, and a dozen other languages besides. In each country the name would tend to be spelt according to the phonetic rules of the local language, so that for example that ending might be spelt -ic (Polish), -iz (German), -its, or in another alphabet altogether. If someone with that name emigrated to an English-speaking country, they might adapt the spelling to make it easier for English-speakers to say, or they might not. So one name might be spelt by its owner in any of a dozen different ways, and whichever they chose to use would be 'correct' for them.

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