Family Tree DNA is recalculating Big Y results

I only knew about this because of an email that began..

Dear Big Y Customers,

We are still recalculating your Big Y results. We apologize for the delay and appreciate your patience during this exciting update to Big Y.

We anticipate this taking approximately 7 more days. During this time, you will continue to see “Results Pending” in the Big Y section. You will be notified by email once your results are processed and ready.

Below is a refresh on the changes we are implementing. We can’t wait for you to experience the new Big Y!

I will note that I got this email 10 days ago, so once again, Family Tree DNA has underestimated the effort required, in terma of how long this will take.

There is extensive discussion of the issue on Anthrogenica. Overall, I think the best approach is to be patient. People have noted the recalculation has changed terminal SNPs in certain cases. The standard for having a unique DNS change has also been adjusted. Again, dirty details are discussed in depth in the Anthrogenica thread.

Yfull results and YDNA calculations at the 50% level.

Yfull emailed me and my results are in.  Yfull calls me R-PH2278, which is their labeling of Z39300. This is a slow outfit, and there will be more results in coming months. I’m especially looking forward to these guys digging out the STRs they can fetch from the BIGY data.

I also spent just a bit of time looking at the 50% limits of a Y37 test. Artie and I are a 36 of 37 match, and his terminus is Cap William Myers, through George. 36/37 at the 50% confidence average 4 generation apart. Folks who test like us are about equally as close or closer than 4 gens, and 50% past that point. Now, the point to remember in this kind of calculation, is that George Myers could be Charles’s father in this deduction. We cannot exclude him as a potential father. George is 23 years old when Charles is born, and if we assume a Northampton PA birth, then yes, George fathering Charles is possible.

So, the 4 gens are: George, William, William’s dad, William’s granddad. At the 50% mark, Charles Sr is, compared to William Sr, his grandchild, his child, his nephew, or his first cousin, once removed.

At this point, there is still plenty of regular genealogy and genetic genealogy to do.

Y assignment BY-1551. Probably wrong again.

This is my latest assignment from Family Tree DNA:

BY-1551. This was an assignment from the National Geographic Geno 2.0+ data set. If you look at Big Tree ( go to link. Search for BY1551. click on it) and also the BY-1551 test at YSeq, they both say the normal base at this location is Cytosine.  But the raw data for my DNA says this base is Cytosine and yet also a mutation. This is an error in the assignment of the data.

 

Y assignment R-FGC11678. Probably wrong.

This is my latest assignment.

Very hard to believe a haplogroup where I am U106-, Z381-, and Z156-. This SNP is a Nat Geo 2.0 Next Gen SNP and the raw assignment is Cytosine. I need to know if X-> C is the actual mutation folks look  for. This could easily be another random mutation on our part.

Update: the U106 spreadsheet of Raymond Wing shows that this change should be G -> A, not a cytosine. So this is another natural mutation, not a diagnostic marker.

Update 2 6/25/2017: for the folks in the L21 Yahoo groups hitting this page repeatedly, thank you. I didn’t realize that my issue was more common than realized. The issue is pretty simple. Nat Geo Geno 2.0 transfers have a data issue in that any point mutation at a site is classed as a “true”, even though the odds of it being the mutation ‘on the books’ is one in three. These classifications wreak havoc with ftDNA terminal haplotype software (crufty stuff, not smart enough to double check the mutation) and so if you do not eventually do a Big Y, your life will become dominated by ftDNA mistakes that you will have to check manually. 

R-S7123 haplotype.

That’s what Family Tree DNA now says. It’s a subtree of P312, perhaps the largest branch of R1b..

familytreeDNA hasn’t said they completed the M343 backbone testing, but the results look as if they have.

I’m looking to see if anyone else matches this, and so far, no hits.

Update 9/27/2016: working on the assumption that ftDNA has tested P311, P312, L21, Z2542 (DF13 alike), and L513, then L21 on down are all negative, and we get this positive S7123 test, derived from the Nat Geo array. It’s kind of a tree busting result.

Update 2 — Mystery Solved.

From this link, we note that the normal S7123 mutation is an Adenine to Guanine replacement. Raw data from my Nat Geo data set shows I have a Cytosine there.

So, it’s not a diagnostic S7123 change, but a random mutation that popped into the picture and causes some noise. There is a DF27 test upcoming, one ftDNA ordered and I didn’t pay for. Much appreciative of that. We’ll see what that brings. Perhaps a DF27+ and another test. At this point, it’s fair to say I’m not S7123 but P312 and need to wait a bit more.

 

 

Intro to the project

Ok, my family are the Myers from Texas, and a specific branch of the Myers from Texas.  My parents were born in Granbury, Texas, in Hood County Texas. On my father’s side, we have been told from time immemorial that we’re descended from Germans, if you go back far enough. But is that true?

Traditional genealogy was the hobby of my Dad’s brother Tom, recently deceased. He could take us back to Charles Myers, born 1789 in Somerset, PA, and died 1857 in Missouri. Beyond that? I recall a comment on the Internet that Charles was a veteran of the War of 1812 and that is dad was Jacob Myers, a Revolutionary War veteran, from Philadelphia. Poking around various trees on Ancestry, I find that Jacob Myers is called Jacob Myers II on some, with a father named Jacob Myers. His birth is given as 1720, sometimes in England, sometimes not. My Dad’s brother was not sure that Jacob and Jacob II were real (see comment below).

 

So, are there ways we can trace back to Germany? The above is where traditional genealogy has gotten us. My father, some six years ago, was given as a birthday present a Y-DNA test from Family Tree DNA. It was a STR (Y-67) test, which if I understand correctly, is a check of hypervariable regions of the Y chromosome and thus useful for finding relations anywhere from 5 to 30+ generations back. Using this, my Dad found a relative named Ross, whose parental line gets lost in North Carolina in the 18th century.  Given how close they are on the 67 test, Ross and my Dad have a common ancestor perhaps 12 generations back, or less (88% by the 8th generation). But that isn’t the leap to get the family to Germany.

These days I’m more interested in defining the Myers haplogroup. I did the Nat Geo Geno 2.0+ test. but for Europeans it has holes. The biggest of these is the lack of the P312 SNP, which is a major European branch. So I’m waiting on more testing at the moment. We are P310 positive, according to Nat Geo.

Anyway, this is enough to introduce you to the problem.  I’ll have more specifics for later.

• The Jacob Myers comment probably needs elaboration. The Jacob Myers that gets pointed to is a real person, but how that person, born in Maryland and supposedly in Philadelphia for some time, gets out to Somerset PA (closer to Pittsburgh, really) to father Charles is really the trick. Sometimes the ancient genealogies contain a lot of wishful thinking, like mothers that give birth at 3 years of age (yes, I’ve seen that too in various records).