Irish Eyes - Vol 9
Welcome to this addition of Irish Eyes, 21 March 2008, I hope you enjoy reading it.
The Irish Type III Website was set up in December 2006 and to date, the website has received nearly 3,500 hits.
Over 235 records of Irish Type III cluster members have been gathered in that time. You are receiving this email as you are a member of this cluster.
The New Website
The new website has been up for a month now ... I hope you are finding it easier to use and altogether a more pleasant experience. The original website was produced with Word and was becoming quite 'clunky'. Roger Rines pushed me to get up to speed again with FrontPage and build a better mousetrap. Some will have noticed that I am having trouble with the Counter. It drops out and resets itself almost every day and I will probably remove it shortly.
A County in Ireland
Several members have contacted me to upgrade their origins from "Ireland" to a specific county. I welcome these updates if you have additional information that we can include on the website, but please don't guess ... if the database is going to remain accurate, we need correct data.
Marker changes for Ysearch entries.
Bill O'Halloran recently wrote to FTDNA, in what I thought was a most insightful email defining the inconsistencies of markers in FTDNA, Ysearch and of course, other labs.
Hi again Catherine,
I am sorry to bother you, but I am finding some inconsistencies in the YSearch database, which I believe is due to allele entries from other testing labs with different nomenclature than that used by FTDNA. One significant example of this is DYS463, which is a significant indicator for the Irish Type III Haplotype cluster to which I belong. My FTDNA test result for DYS463 is 25. However, to be consistent with other entries in the YSearch database, it was necessary to subtract 2 from my result before entering it into YSearch. Without this conversion, I would have mismatched hundreds of people in this cluster in the YSearch database. This issue was addressed by Mr. Thomas Krahn of FamilyTreeDNA in his April 6, 2007 email: http://www.irishtype3dna.org/thomaskrahn.php. However, this issue is not addressed in the YSearch conversion page, so many people getting this marker tested may not be aware of this discrepancy.
I fear a similar problem exists with several of the markers in the new FP Panel 9 test results I have received. By comparing these 10 markers only in YSearch, I found 51 people with the same Panel 9 markers tested, but the DYS589 results in all 51 comparisons were either 1, 2, or 3. Thus, my result of 12 doesn't match anyone. Thank you for changing the YSearch database to accommodate my DYS589 tested value of 12, but that does nothing to help me find people with common ancestry in YSearch, all of whom to date have been entered using a different numbering system!
The following link from Larry Vick indicates that a conversion is necessary on the EthnoAncestry test results for 4 of the 10 markers tested in the FTDNA Panel 9 for entering into YSearch: http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/GENEALOGY-DNA/2008-03/1205233826. These are: DYS494 add 1; DYS522 add 1; DYS589 subtract 10; and DYS636 subtract 1. Subtracting 10 from my DYS589 result, as suggested by Mr. Vick, gives me a value of 2, which is consistent with all existing results in YSearch.
Maybe I'm missing something, but I find this very confusing. If data are being entered into YSearch in varying formats, it makes it impossible to find matches and undercuts its whole purpose. The point here is not which standard is correct. The point is that people need to know how to make their results consistent with data that may have been previously entered into YSearch from different labs using different nomenclature. It would be really helpful to alert people to these potential issues. Furthermore, if some people are making corrections to their FTDNA test results to match previous entries and others are not, the integrity of the YSearch database could be seriously compromised as a tool for genealogical research. That would be too bad.
I really appreciate having the availability of YSearch to help me in my genealogy research. I think it is a wonderful tool. However, I hope that you or someone in your organization will address this issue on behalf of the many people who may be unaware of the potential discrepancies inherent in the YSearch database.
Thank you for your consideration of this matter.
Yours truly,
Bill O'Halloran
Kit 55369
Lets hope Bill's email will cause FTDNA to look closely at the standards that they are using and perhaps overhaul Ysearch to line up with ISFG Standards. The DNA Commission of the International Society of Forensic Genetics (ISFG) published nomenclature guidelines in 2006.
UPDATE 01 March 2010
As from 01 March 2010, ySearch has fallen into line with NIST standards. ySearch is now expecting the higher values for DYS452 and DYS463. If you received your results from FTDNA, Ancestry or Genebase, these two markers need NO conversion
A New Paper on Irish in Munster
A new paper has been published called Genetic Investigation of the Patrilineal Kinship Structure of Early Medieval Ireland 2008 Brian McEvoy, Katherine Simms and Daniel G Bradley.
It attempts to find a signature haplotype for Eoganacht and Dal Cais tribes of Munster but fails to achieve very much because they chose to analyse the wrong markers! As we know, the critical markers for Dal Cais (Irish Type III) are DYS459=8,9 and DYS464=13,13,15,17 but they did not test these markers! DYS439 was the only marker of 17 that shows any difference from the Atlantic Modal Haplotype (AMH) for our cluster, and even that is not all that strongly 11 (AMH=12). I have written to the authors of the paper and it will be interesting to see if I get a reply.
For those interested in reading this paper, it can be found here
S25 Testing and the search for a new SNP for our Cluster
Still no results from EthnoAncestry of our testing ... let's hope that the delay is because our elusive SNP is upsetting their primers used in their testing. Better to wait a little longer and find the SNP than rush things or give up and miss it.
If any members have comments, suggestions or an article that you would like to write for Irish Eyes please drop me a line .... warning, this flyer may not be too regular !!!
Slainte, Dennis Wright
