[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] DNA

[Earl Schultz]

Hi Sieg,
You got some good advice especially from Caroline Brymore.  MyHeritage is new and they don't have a large database yet.  I also don't know yet what they have to offer.  My recommendation is to use FTDNA and then transfer your results to Gedmatch.  If you ever want to do further testing such as your y-DNA you'll have to test at FTDNA so you may as well start there.

Be careful in interpreting any ethnicity results especially from that far back.  Theoretically you would inherit about 3% from your GGG Grandmother but because DNA recombines randomly it could be 0% or much more.  Only testing a number of descendants stands a chance to capture some of her DNA.  Also, ethnicity databases are not scientific although Gedmatch's appear to be.  For example, if I am British but my earliest ancestor was born in India then any match to me would imply India ancestry.  No doubt they try to account for this but sometimes their samples are very small.  I'm told that there are only about 11 people with "Ukrainian" ancestry in the FTDNA database.  Ethnicity testing is attracting a lot of attention because of current advertising and it is not as accurate as they make out.

Gedmatch uses about 40 different databases that have been developed by "specialists" who may be scientists, I don't know.  If you compare your DNA to the wrong database you will get incorrect results.  I tried one database and I was largely native American which I am not in the least.  However, if you compare yourself to a few of the relevant databases you may get some results that satisfy your curiosity.

Perhaps someone knows more about this than I do.  I know to be cautious but I don't know enough to point you in the right direct except that likely you will be better off using FTDNA.  They also offer a $79 autosomal test called Family Finder.  Sorry, you will end up with 100s of new cousins and a few of them may actually be treasures, opening up new lines of research for you.

Good luck
Earl
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Message: 1
Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2016 16:32:44 -0700
From: Sieg Schewe <siegschewe at hotmail.com>
To: SGGEE <ger-poland-volhynia at sggee.org>
Subject: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] DNA
Message-ID: <BLU179-W48C91688BD53CDC074FBB4D8BB0 at phx.gbl>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Hello Members: Thank you all who offered and translated the German document for me.
Will a DNA test tell me if I am a small % of Scottish from my ggg-grandmother. 
On the male side everyone is German for 7 generations before me.
If so which is the best DNA type and company to use for the Scottish info?
I am not looking to see if I have more relatives with the DNA or any other?information.
MyHeritage has a price of $79 at the moment but not sure if there DNA would give me the answer.
Thanks 		 	   		  

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Message: 2
Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2016 15:40:53 -0800
From: Marilyn Bowker <positivechanges.bowker at gmail.com>
To: Sieg Schewe <siegschewe at hotmail.com>
Cc: SGGEE <ger-poland-volhynia at sggee.org>
Subject: Re: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] DNA
Message-ID: <18582F03-01E3-464C-9FB0-FA1A5C4D9E06 at gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252

Hello Sieg:

My experience is with 23andme - where I did the test - and then with GEDmatch which is a fabulous free site with all kinds of tools to analyze the data; you upload your results from other companies onto it.     It does not give percentages in the way you are seeking.     23andme does tell you what percentage of various populations you have but I just checked and Scottish is not a category.    Presumably it would be lumped into the ?British-Irish? category.   You could likely ask them that question before doing the sample.

I have no experience with MyHeritage results except that I uploaded my 23andme results onto that site.     I have not been impressed with the information given there.

Hope this is helpful.

M
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Message: 3
Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2016 10:44:41 +1100
From: Caroline Brymora <carolinebrymora at gmail.com>
To: Sieg Schewe <siegschewe at hotmail.com>
Cc: SGGEE <ger-poland-volhynia at sggee.org>
Subject: Re: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] DNA
Message-ID:
	<CAFAa4_0uboDM=JRVukaP5icw+8xf_HbgpG1Y2DLe2qGnXwCb1A at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

Hello Sieg



The main test is Autosomal DNA test (atDNA) offered by a few different places.  Each will give you different ethnicity breakdowns, and this is because they have different datasets that they are using.

Autosomal DNA is passed down from your ancestors, but you may get lots or a little or none from specific ancestors. Whether it will show your GGG grandmother being scottish will depend on how much (if any) DNA you inherited from her, but also what bits of DNA from other ancestors are from that group!  As an exmple, I have a known Australian Aboriginal GGG grandmother - this is the same distance as your Scottis one. My DNA test at ancestry shows 2% Melanesian (which covers some islands as well as Australian Aboriginal).

Scottish would show up as "british isles" or "irish" I believe (depending on which test you use and what their parameters are).

There are 3 main testing companies
* FTDNA - smaller customer base, higher participation of european testers
* Ancestry.com - largest customer base (over 2 million)
* 23andme - large customer base. Many customers only do it for health testing. I've heard there are good comparison tools there, but i haven't done a test there so don't know much about it.

I think that myheritage DNA test might just be a re-branded FTDNA test. I wouldn't be too keen on them yet - their DNA matching algorithms need
refinement- I have 9 matches, of which only 3 match either of my parent.
with the other 6, if they don't match either of my parents, then as far as I am concerned it is a False match - showing as a match to me but it is false because they don't match either parent.

No mattch which one you use, you can upload your data to gedmatch.com - which is free (runs on donations) so you can compare to anyone else that has uploaded there, no matter which company they tested with.  I don't know yet whether myheritage test will let you download your data file to upload to gedmatch.

There are two other DNA tests that can be done, and are only available through FTDNA.  They are
* Y-DNA - male only. Shows your halogroup going back many generations on your direct male line. this is because the male gets one chromosome
(intact) from his father. Mutations happen occasionally, so around the world people have different results.
* mtdna - done by male or female. the mtdna is the dna in the body of the cell, not the nucleus (where the autosomal dna is). Your mitochondrial DNA comes from your MOTHER. A father does not pass his along. Just like Y-DNA, this passes down the generations with only occasional mutations.

I hope that this makes sense - at least as some starting information.

Happy to help anyone in this group with DNA questions  either on the group or email me privately :)

On 12 November 2016 at 10:32, Sieg Schewe <siegschewe at hotmail.com> wrote: