{"id":2486,"date":"2008-05-04T14:00:24","date_gmt":"2008-05-04T21:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/2008\/05\/04\/genetic-genealogists-book-discussed-by-the-genealogy-guys\/"},"modified":"2008-05-04T14:00:24","modified_gmt":"2008-05-04T21:00:24","slug":"genetic-genealogists-book-discussed-by-the-genealogy-guys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/2486","title":{"rendered":"Genetic Genealogist's Book Discussed by The Genealogy Guys"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, Miriam<\/a> started it.<\/p>\n

She wrote to the Genealogy Guys to tell them about Blaine Bettinger’s e-book “I Have The Results of My Genetic Genealogy Test, Now What?”.<\/p>\n

George Morgan took a look at Blaine’s book, was very enthusiastic about it, and discussed it in The Genealogy Guys Podcast Episode #135<\/a>, mentioning that it is a concise, well-written explanation of how to interpret the results of Y-DNA and mtDNA tests.<\/p>\n

I heartily agree.<\/p>\n

I downloaded Blaine’s e-book a couple of weeks ago from his blog, The Genetic Genealogist<\/a>. For a book on such a technical subject, I found Blaine’s book to be an easy read. The book delivers a lot of information, but doesn’t overwhelm the reader.<\/p>\n

Blaine’s e-book includes the following four chapters in a concise 28 pages:<\/p>\n

Chapter 1: What Is (And Isn\u00e2\u20ac\u0178t) Genetic Genealogy?
\nChapter 2: How Do I Interpret My Y-DNA Results?
\nChapter 3: How Do I Interpret My mtDNA Results?
\nChapter 4: Monitoring the Field of Genetic Genealogy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For some time, I\u00c2\u00a0have agonized about having my DNA tested, not because I had any qualms about having my DNA tested, but because I really didn’t understand the nature of the tests, couldn’t decide on which tests to take,\u00a0and couldn’t decide on which testing company to hire.<\/p>\n

I couldn’t even decide why I would\u00c2\u00a0want to have my DNA tested. I was\u00c2\u00a0certainly curious about what the results would be, but was that reason enough to spend the money for the tests?<\/p>\n

Recently,\u00a0three of my Niedzialkowski\/Niedzialkoski cousins\u00c2\u00a0completed a DNA study<\/a> to confirm or disprove\u00c2\u00a0their relationships despite the absence of direct genealogical evidence. Intrigued by the results of their study, I decided to jump into the fray despite the fact that I had no immediate questions that I hoped the analysis of my DNA could answer.<\/p>\n

I had my Y-DNA and mtDNA tested through FamilyTreeDNA<\/a> .\u00a0I had no idea which tests I should order, so I just ordered the biggest package deal offered by FamilyTreeDNA. This turned out to be FamilyTreeDNA’s “Super DNA” test,\u00a0which includes\u00c2\u00a0an analysis of 67 markers on\u00c2\u00a0my Y-Chromosome and full sequencing of my mitochondrial genome.<\/p>\n

The results came in. I was informed that my\u00c2\u00a0Y-DNA haplogroup is R1b, as predicted by the analysis of short tandem repeats (STRs). I have ordered an analysis of\u00c2\u00a0single nucleotide polymorphisms to confirm the haplogroup assignment. The results are\u00c2\u00a0due in about a week from now. I expected to belong to R1a, the haplogroup to which my Niedzialkowski cousins belong. However,\u00a0I inherited my Y-DNA from my Danko ancestors, not my Niedzialkowski ancestors, and R1b is the most common European haplogroup, so there are really no big surprises here.<\/p>\n

My mitochondrial haplogroup is W1. Again, there are no big surprises here, since haplogroup W is found in the western Ural mountains, the eastern Baltic, Poland,\u00a0and a few other countries.<\/p>\n

Beyond the haplogroup designations, the results of my DNA tests\u00c2\u00a0seemed like\u00c2\u00a0just a bunch of numbers until I read Blaine’s e-book. Now, I understand what all the designations mean and why those particular regions of DNA were selected for genealogical purposes.<\/p>\n

Blaine’s e-book doesn’t address autosomal DNA tests or X-DNA tests, but that’s not a shortcoming. I learned the answers to the questions I had on Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA testing, and that has helped me appreciate the results of my tests even more.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2008 by Stephen J. Danko<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I downloaded Blaine’s e-book a couple of weeks ago from his blog, The Genetic Genealogist. For a book on such a technical subject, I found Blaine’s book to be an easy read. The book delivers a lot of information, but doesn’t overwhelm the reader. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27],"tags":[177],"class_list":["post-2486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-journal","tag-dna"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pyBfX-E6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2486\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}