It's DNA turtles all the way down!!

[sengsational]

Wow, just wow. I respect our law enforcement agencies, but they are run by people who have flaws and sometimes just make mistakes or get tunnel vision.

I'm less worried about the FBI asking 23andMe to see if they have any matches for crime scene DNA than I am about having my fingerprints in the mega fingerprint database they have, as I think the chance of getting a false positive on a fingerprint is higher (no, I don't have a link). I was (am) annoyed by the "place your hand here" technology when crossing borders, but there seemed to be no way around it. I don't know if they stored that, but if not, I have never otherwise given up my fingerprints knowingly.


If "they" want your fingerprints or DNA, they can get it, but that's not the problem that's troubling. It's that if you're in their huge searchable database (whether DNA or fingerprints), you can become a "person of interest" based on a false positive. Depending on how bad they want to solve the case, you might be "inconvenienced", or worse.

 

[braumeister]

I'm less worried about the FBI asking 23andMe to see if they have any matches for crime scene DNA than I am about having my fingerprints in the mega fingerprint database

Well it won't get any better any time soon. Facial recognition software is getting so good that it's the #1 tool used in many places.

 

[sengsational]

Well it won't get any better any time soon. Facial recognition software is getting so good that it's the #1 tool used in many places.

Excellent point. I can't believe I got through the post without thinking about it. And you give up your face at the DMV and the Passport office, so it's there and searchable.

 

[JoeWras]

Good points. The DNA was just another searchable database. sengsational's point about fingerprints is spot on.

Oh well, maybe the story The Minority Report is our future. We are just creating the precogs.

 

[omni550]

Another possibility is some early Spanish colonizers brought Native American women, or children they fathered, back to Spain.

Earlier this week, I attended a lecture by a history professor from Univ. of S. Florida - St. Petersburg. He has spent the last decade or so researching the earliest European arrivals in Florida (= Spaniards in the mid-1500s like DeSoto, etc.)

He and his graduate students spend their summers in Spain digging through 500-year-old records and papers, piecing together the names and stories of the folks involved in the early voyages back and forth. He mentioned that they have found records of a Native American who went to Spain (on a return trip with the Spaniards) for a while and then came back to Florida. He was named "Pedro". That's all the information they have on him at the moment, but it does show that a Native American was in Europe in the 1500s.

omni

 

[Nords]

Years ago, when Nords first had his 23-and-me test done, it was a new and intriguing idea. I fantasized about what I might discover if I had mine done. My grandmother was adopted. I wanted to get mine done as soon as I could afford it, to find out where her birth family was from.

Now I can afford it, but in the years since, I have heard of many possible down sides of having this done. Besides it is probably more fun to dream and speculate than to have this pinned down. Maybe,

As cool as the ancestry and relatives features may be, I found far greater value in the medical information.

I would've liked to have known that I was a carrier for cystic fibrosis before we started a family. Shortly after I learned that, a search for "Nordman cystic fibrosis" turned up a distant relative with CF who endured a double-lung transplant at age 20.

I have a couple other zingers on my genome which "inspired" me to completely overhaul my lifestyle, and after five years of progressive efforts I'm pretty sure that the changes have become habits. I'll blog about those in the next few months.

In a very Millennial relationship, my son-in-law spit in a 23andMe test tube before he and my daughter married. I haven't asked about the results.

 

[Koolau]

I think this is a little sensationalistic. What the article says is really going on is a lot less... fraught.

<SNIP>

One look at my tag line and you might (correctly) assume I will not be spitting any time soon. YMMV

 

[beowulf]

If you served in the military during the past 30 years, the government already has your DNA and fingerprints. If you held a security clearance above secret, they have your fingerprints. Plus, our kids were fingerprinted when they were very young, over 40 years ago, and those are on file also (encouraged by law enforcement in case of a kidnapping.

My wife and I are very curious about or past as we only know as far back as our grandparents as they all emigrated to the US from eastern Europe before 1910. But we won't do the testing as we really don't want to find out about distant relatives - we know all of our first cousins as the family wasn't that large. I'm sure there are many second and third cousins out there, but what's the point? That still won't tell us anything about much earlier than the late 1800s.

 

[akck]

Sometimes, you find new information on family and other times you don’t get differences you hoped. My wife took the Ancestry DNA test last year and found a new first cousin from her mom’s side. Her differences from her father didn’t pan out. The first cousin was a shock, but the adoption information they had connected the dots. So her cousin tested and matched, gaining a step-sister (test wasn’t needed because step-sis looked like her mom).

We both took the 23 & Me test, more to find out if we carry any health risk markers they test. Turned out we were negative on almost all. Wife had an Alzheimers risk (which she already knew), and we both have a macular degeneration risk. Told the kids they’re relatively safe. My wife also got a match for another first cousin. We figure this one is from her father’s side as her grandmother divorced and both re-married. There’s been no contact with her grandfather’s side. My results were less dramatic as I’m 100% Japanese.

Since my wife took 2 tests, we could see the results didn’t compare. I just went in to Ancestry to get her percentages and her results were updated and refined. They both now show her to be mainly Ireland, Scotland and Great Britain in heritage. The results don’t match entirely, but they are more inline with each other. So as their database gets bigger, your results may change.

 

[target2019]

You can go further by downloading the kits from Ancestry, and uploading to GEDmatch. There are comparison tools to find matches to you both. Another report is called, "Are your parents related?".

Promethease is a site that accepts uploads of your kit. It's $5 or something inexpensive to get a very detailed report on health, with publication references and citations. One thing worth mentioning is that some 23andMe results require further inspection. Promethease flags results to point out some areas of 23andme that may need confirmation.

 

[target2019]

Today, all paper genealogy needs to be corroborated by DNA evidence.

https://dna-explained.com/2018/07/11/ancestors-what-constitutes-proof/

Sometime around 1976 I began a tree for the family. The first version was based on what the living told me. Since the earliest venture, there have been several periods where I've jumped back in and performed more research. The link above explains what some of the collected evidence means, and what it doesn't. Throughout the years I've been able to piece together more about perssonal ancestry, and prove many items, at least to myself. Autosomal DNA, Y DNA, and Mitochondrial DNA tests have not revealed spectacular hidden secrets, but do provide confirmation of migration over long periods.

And I am not German, as my surname has broadcasted for over 60 years. I'm actually 50% Irish, 20% European Jewish, 20% Germanic, and the rest an interesting collection of European bits. The autosomal results which tell ancestry dot com these things coincide with what the living told me back in 1976. The results also agree with more extensive paper records recorded by relatives over the years, and passed to me through various databases.

I am the result of a DNA moment, but the DNA migration between ancient times and 1925 (parents approximate birth) tells a very long story which I'm just beginning to understand, and only in a very general way. The DNA turtles don't line up so neatly in the picture below, do they? It is likely showing an admixture that took place over hundreds of years, maybe a thousand? I always thought of my ancestors as stacked German turtles, but now know I am closer to a blended European.

 

[indiajust]

The genetic markers are absolute, the decision to identify them as "ent-ish" or "gnome-ish" is colloquial. It is just an effort to communicate across complexity.


We are not of the land. We are of the people.


Gene changes are tracked over time, they can generally be pinned down to windows in time. The spread of those changes throughout the population can also be tracked statistically.



Archaeology can tie when to where via various dating techniques. But the genetic info is long gone.



Location and "ish-ness" are just an attempt to broadly categorize and combine the where and when of archaeology with the what and when of genetics. Correlation, not causation.

 

[YoungSaver]

You guys are too worried about the police getting your DNA results.

Experian can't even keep their credit reports safe. If hackers stole the DNA database, imagine what could happen.

 

[Sunset]

...

And I am not German, as my surname has broadcasted for over 60 years. I'm actually 50% Irish, 20% European Jewish, 20% Germanic, and the rest an interesting collection of European bits. ......
.....

That sounds like the commercial

 

[Sunset]

You guys are too worried about the police getting your DNA results.

Experian can't even keep their credit reports safe. If hackers stole the DNA database, imagine what could happen.

They will clone your DNA, and use it to break into places that use the new dna password system (coming soon)...

 

[MichaelB]

They will clone your DNA, and use it to break into places that use the new dna password system (coming soon)...

That is a great idea for a book.

 

[JoeWras]

That is a great idea for a book.

Is Al on this thread?

 

[SpinDoctorTX]

If one of your parents has a small number of genes that are more common in Native Americans, that doesn't mean that all their children should necessarily inherit those genes. I don't think you would say "either all have it, or none of us have it" if we were talking about the genes for blue eyes or the ones that make cilantro taste like soap or the ones that cause a disease like Tay Sachs.

I suspect that the 23andMe algorithm will only identify Native American ancestry if certain thresholds and combinations exist. You may have a few markers that occur in Native Americans and Asians, so it's inconclusive whether you have ancestors from one or both areas; while a sibling has a few more markers, some of which are the same as yours and others of which occur in Native Americans and Africans, so the sibling is more likely to get a probability score for being of Native American descent.

I had the same experience, and even though I have proven Cherokee ancestors (based on the # of generations to dilute), the highest amt I could possibly have in my blood would be less that 1% after doing the math. So, I wasn't surprised by my results of having no native Amer ancestry. I am, however, 1% Jewish- and I'm still trying to figure out where that came from!

 

[target2019]

I had the same experience, and even though I have proven Cherokee ancestors (based on the # of generations to dilute), the highest amt I could possibly have in my blood would be less that 1% after doing the math. So, I wasn't surprised by my results of having no native Amer ancestry. I am, however, 1% Jewish- and I'm still trying to figure out where that came from!

This is a very long article, but explains why small percentages are unreliable for ethnicity.
https://dna-explained.com/2016/02/10/ethnicity-testing-a-conundrum/

 

[Katsmeow]

Years ago, when Nords first had his 23-and-me test done, it was a new and intriguing idea. I fantasized about what I might discover if I had mine done. My grandmother was adopted. I wanted to get mine done as soon as I could afford it, to find out where her birth family was from.

Now I can afford it, but in the years since, I have heard of many possible down sides of having this done. Besides it is probably more fun to dream and speculate than to have this pinned down. Maybe,

I belong to a number of groups that help people with searching. Sometimes, it is people like me who are looking for their own biological parents. I found my birthfather through DNA testing and it ended up being a good experience. (He was deceased but he had adopted his stepchildren and that has been a wonderful experience to get to know them.)

In some instances people are searching for information about parentage of more distant relatives. I am helping someone now whose mother was born in 1912 and was adopted. Even with a total lack of information, I have through DNA been able to almost identify the parents. (The father is one of two siblings...the other is one of two siblings).

Anyway out of the many, many, many instances of informational searching that I have found very rarely has there been any negative to the search, particularly with more distant searching. There are occasional situations where a living birth parent does not want contact. But, even in those situations the person searching is generally glad to have the information.

One of the things I most enjoy is helping people with searches because it is often so satisfying for them to find out what they can.

(This is not to say that you must search. Not everyone wants to and that is OK. Just saying that in my experience most people don't find negatives with knowing more information.)