I was wondering whether the testing lab has come back with any preliminary
results of any kind?

How many people have submitted samples so far?

- a.l. bell
kansas city, missouri

Edited by the Moderator on Duty

On the homepage, it is written: "The current state-of-the-art genetic
testing is only capable of directly tracing relatives through two of
your eight great-grandparents."

Does that mean that those of us who are already "elders" and whose
great-grandparents have long since left our company should not bother do
DNA testing?

If that is true, how is the answer to one your FAQs possible, the FAQ
which reads: "All genetic tests will provide you a probability that you
and another person, who have an exact match, in our case (11/11), will
have your Most Recent Common Ancestor (MRCA) within a range of time
backwards. Our test gives you the following range: 16 generations (50%)
likelihood, 37 generations (80%) likelihood, and 52 generations (90%)
likelihood. To go to the absolute 100.00% certainty that your MRCA has
occurred you would have to accept an outside limit of approximately 1900
years back."

With all due respect, something is NOT NOT NOT making sense to me.

If it makes sense to you, would you explain, please?

Further, if your database is limited to only living or recently-living
persons, how are you comparing it with those back 16/37/52/ generations
back? Are you getting samples >from graves? archeological sites? or are
you merely projecting backwards????

Thanks.

Barbara C. Johnson
Andover, Massachusetts USA
barbaracjohnson@...

Hi

I have results back >from the Lab on the Y chromosome tests, the mtDNA
will be up in a few days (according to the sequencing lab at the U of A.

I really expect that I'll have some stuff within the week and that the
procedure will go much faster in the near term future.,

For your info i have decided to underwrite the costs of a Jewish mtDNA
study of the major Jewish populations of the world...the 7 referred to
in Dr. Hammers latest study that only dealt with Y chromosome testing
(see the article linked to HTTP://www.familytreedna.com ) on the main
page you will see a link to NOVA, start with the abstract, if you want,
as the whole article is very intensive, but it's all there.

So far we have about 140 people in the database, it's growing faster
now than it was certainly at the beginning, about 90% of the people
are Jewish, although you understand that i can't discriminate, i am
Primarily doing this for Jewish genealogical purposes.

Also i would ask that you keep the fact that I'm underwriting the mtDNA
testing for Jewish female populations discrete until we have a chance
to get it in the works.

Your private emails on this subject are not off topic.

Best regards

Bennett Greenspan

Thanks, I received a wonderful explanation yesterday. But new is the
cousin side of your explanation. Great.
Thanks,

Barbara
--
Barbara C. Johnson

Bcg wrote:

Hi Barbara

Let me explain the sentence as I intended for the sentence to come out and
the rest will fall into place.

Every one of us had 8 great-grandparents. Those would be considered
branches on our family trees. We can trace ONLY relatives who are related
to you on your mothers mothers side, back to a few thousand years. Same
is trues, back a few thousand years on your dad's dads side, but ONLY those
two specific branches back in time.

To trace back in time to relatives connected to another of your remaining
6 G grandparents (in the example above) progenitors, you should need to
use cousins of yours

Please see the page: http://www.familytreedna.com/tc.html I think that
the page will help too.

Best regards

Bennett Greenspan FTDNA HOUSTON




At 12:07 AM 07/29/2000 -0400, you wrote:

On the homepage, it is written: "The current state-of-the-art genetic
testing is only capable of directly tracing relatives through two of
your eight great-grandparents."

Bennett Greenspan

"chance favors the educated mind"

At the risk of complicating the business of figuring out family trees, I must
point out that not everyone has (or had) eight great-grandparents. My
parents were first cousins, as were my maternal grandparents: my mother's
mother was a younger sister of my father's father (they were full, not half,
siblings), and my maternal grandmother's mother was a sister of my maternal
grandfather's father (also full siblings). My paternal grandmother was
unrelated to my other three grandparents, and to the best of my knowledge, my
maternal grandfather's mother was unrelated to her husband prior to their
marriage. Result? I had six great-grandparents: my paternal grandmother's
parents (2), my paternal grandfather's and maternal grandmother's parents (2,
not 4), and my maternal grandfather's parents (2).

It may sound trite and picky of me to mention that set of relationships, but
in Central and Eastern European families of earlier years, first-cousin
marriages were more common than many of us think. Jewish tradition certainly
didn't preclude such unions (in fact, I believe they were encouraged), and
people forced by such factors as edict, climate, finances and a lack of easy
means of communication and transportation (i.e. planes, trains and
automobiles) to live only in certain areas might find it difficult to seek
partners (or spouses for their children) elsewhere. If they came >from large
families (like mine) whose children tended to be hardy and long-lived, they
might at some point find that many of the people they knew were related to
them in some way anyway!

In the United States, first-cousin marriage is permitted in some states but
not others; yes, it was quite legal in my parents' case as well as my
mother's parents'. And no, I am not a medical anomaly, although the Red
Cross says I have the world's rarest red-cell factor. (A colleague of mine,
who's a bit of a wag, says I have a family tree that doesn't branch!)

Barbara Pilvin