mtDNA Haplogroup K

This is all going much quicker than I thought it would. Well, I guess it is my DNA nd the DNA of my family...it should be aware of how impatient I am!

Last night I got an e-mail saying my father's mtDNA results were in. These results follow his mother's mother's mother's line, and turns out he (and I by extension) belongs to haplogroup K. What does this tell me? Not much so far. I just started sifting through the information. It does tell me that this is another line where I don't belong to the most popular Western European haplogroup of H. Awesome. I have a serious need to be different. Of course, this will make it more difficult to connect with DNA family. Oh well. I love a good challenge.

What else...Katie Couric belongs to haplogroup K, as does Oesti, the Tyrolean Iceman, which is interesting because my family's always kinda been interested in him, since he was found on the Austro-Italian border shortly before we traveled there for the first time.

Haplogroup K is also found in large numbers in the Ashkenazi Jewish population. This doesn't mean that if you're a K, you have Jewish roots. But it's an interesting angle. According to Wikipedia, it is common in non-Jews from Ireland, the Alps, and Great Britain. In my family, K belongs to a German line I'm following (Helen Stutzman, Helen Haase, Meta Ricklefs, Meta Tiedemann, Meta Buckmann, and possibly Lucia Borger. Obviously, it goes way further back than that. Bu that's he extent of my non-DNA genealogical research into my father's maternal branch.

The way mtDNA works is that certain mutations in your DNA place you into certain haplogroups. So, K members have six basic mutations - 16311C, 16519C, 73G, 263G and 315.1C. Then there are subclades, or subgroups, within the haplogroup. Ashkenazi Jews have certain markers. More than a few K subclades have the 146C and 152C mutation as well. My father has all of these. So far, though, i my limited research, he also has 2 other mutations, one, 309.1C which I think I saw someone else had, and 16153A, which I haven't been able to find in anybody else. The good thing about this is that you have to be an exact mtDNA match to be anywhere close to being related (and I'm talking close as in thousands of years, not tens of thousands of years). The bad thing is it makes the search harder.

I also realized that my father's test results were HVR 1 plus HVR 2 results, which means more markers were tested, which means you have a better chance of findng what subclade you belong to. When I tested as haplogroup T for the National Geographic Genographic project, I only got HVR 1 results, so I may actually get new information back when I get my results (of course the impatient one's results come in last!)

Relatability test

Ok, so starting to get a feel for what these DNA tests can do. Ancestry created a new account for each of the tests I bought. I didn't want to have to log into my brother's account every time I wanted to check his results, so I manually entered his results onto my page (since they belong to me, too). Now we're both in the database, so when it gives me my paternal matches, my brother comes up as an exact match. With an exact match, our most recent common ancestor (MRCA) was given as 1 generation back. Which, yes, that's true. But it turns out that it's only a 50 percent certainty. The site pretty much guarantees a 95 percent certainty of a MRCA at 11 generations. So while my brother and I are an exact match and related one generation back, anyone else I find in the database with an exact match could be anywhere between there and 275 years back for a MRCA. The database says anyone off by only 2 or 3 markers is a pretty close match, which would seem to be true, but to find someone related no more than 300 years back from you, you need an exact match. Which considering my branchless tree (at least on the Gorry end of things) is one I need to cross my fingers and knock on wood for.

Paternal genealogy

The interesting thing about my paternal genealogy line (and maybe for some of you I'm playing a little fast and loose with the word "interesting") is that with the exception of my dad's cousins by his dad's brother, I'm not entirely hopeful about finding close relatives on the Gorry line. Well, close is a relative term. At least as far back as my 3rd great grandfather, James Gorry (6 generations, born 1830 in Ireland) until my grandfather and his brother, there is only a single Gorry line to follow. James Sr. had two sons, James and Michael, but Michael never married or had kids. James Jr. had two sons, Joseph and Elmer Sr., but Joseph died three days before his 7th birthday. Elmer Sr. had two sons, Elmer Jr. (my grandfather) and Eugene (Uncle Gerard), and its here that the Gorry line has its first branches in 100 years. Uncle Gerard had three sons who each had a son, and my grandfather had two sons, of which my father had two sons. So I have my paternal second-cousins, but other than that, the closest paternal cousins (or even cousins following a maternal Gorry line for that matter as none of the daughters born in that 100 year interval had any children of their own, either...totally branchless!) I can hope to find would be if James Sr. had any siblings or if his father, Cornelius, had any siblings. Cornelius is as far back as I've traced that line. That would be a fifth or sixth cousin. But it would be interesting if I could find one, although if I had to go even further back to find a long-lost cousin, it would make me even more amazed at the persistance of the Gorry line in the face of its branch shortage...nature just can't seem to get rid of us!

DNA results #1 are in!

I am super stoked! Just yesterday, I was on the Ancestry.com website checking the DNA page and saying to myself, "Why are you being a glutton for punishment? You *know* the results won't be in yet!" And then I got the e-mail!! Apparently my brother has super speedy DNA. I was supposed to have to wait four weeks and I only had to wait a week for his. If his DNA was a girl, some people would not be calling it a lady...but I don't care, because it knew I was impatient and it came through for me to tide me over till the other results come in!

I guess y-chromosome DNA tests are easier to read than mtDNA tests. That's probably the real answer.

So, the y-chromosome test was for the Gorry line (father's father's father's line, etc.) and the Gorrys, like 70 percent of people from Western Europe and 90 percent from England and Ireland, belong to the group R1b. The page shows a readout of the results, a map of the group coming out of Mesopotamia and traveling through Eastern to Western Europe, a description of that particular group of people, all of which I have to read more closely to get a better idea of what it all means. But the coolest factor I think is you can also find paternal matches of other people who have uploaded their DNA results to Ancestry. Depending on how many markers you have in common, you can find people you are closely related to and how many generations back you have to go to find a common ancestor. Like, at 70 generations back, my brother matched with more than 250 people. Big whoop. Everyone in the world is related 70 generations back. But there's one woman in England that has a 50 percent chance of being related to us only 13 generations, or 325 years, back. That would be around the year 1683. My Raynor ancestors had already been in America for 50 years at that point, so for me as a genealogist, a connection from that time period does not feel that far back. And on the Gorry side...I can't trace them farther than 1800 so far!

Anyway, it's all just as exciting as I thought it would be. And as more people do this and add their info to the database, more possible familial links will turn up and more "long-lost" relatives could be found. Definitely have to start finding out more about my bro's results, then...jeez, I feel like such a dork. But I'm so excited, I don't even care!

DNA analysis in progress!

Just checked the Ancestry website and finally got the news I've been looking for...the labs have received my DNA samples. They got mine and my brother's yesterday, my father's on Wednesday. Apparently his DNA was so super excited to be analyzed that even though I mailed all the packets at the same time, his searched for and found a short cut in order to get to Utah a day earlier than the other two...and he couldn't share his time-saving tip with his comrades? I don't know how I feel about my dad's DNA anymore...

Anyhow, uppity and unfriendly DNA aside, all three samples are accounted for and the analysis can begin. They say it takes an average of 4 weeks to get results. With my Irish luck, it'll take longer, but in any case, let the countdown begin!

The genetics journey begins

Well, the cheeks have been swabbed, vigorously, and the swabs have been mailed. My dad, my brother, and I all took our DNA tests and submitted them to Ancestry.com for testing. I'm very excited. We each took a different test (well, my dad and I took the same one, but they'll be tracing different lines), so I should be getting results that trace my paternal Gorry line, my maternal line, and my father's maternal line - those lines are impossible to name as it follows the female so each generation has a new name...

I'm very curious about the results, which I probably won't be getting for another four weeks at the earliest (even when I'm hitting brick walls, genealogy still teaches me things, like patience!). My sample should come back showing the T haplogroup, which is what my NatGeo DNA results told me, but I'd like to see if there's any more info on T than there was 4 years ago. I don't know anything about tracing the y-chromosome, so I have no idea what to expect result-wise for the Gorry line, so that'll be something new to learn when I get those results back, and then there's my father's maternal line. Like I said in another post, 40-60 percent of people of European descent belong to the H haplogroup according to their mtDNA, so that's the result I'm expecting to find there. And I don't think my father quite understands why we did this or what we'll learn from it, so I'm excited to share those results with him once they come in - hopefully there'll be a map and some info more specific to the haplogroup we fall into, which will clear some things up.

So thanks to my dad and my brother for helping out, especially my brother, who gave me his DNA even though I couldn't guarantee that it wouldn't be used at some point in the future to frame him for a crime he never committed. Thanks, family! :)

The Genographic Project

I've actually taken a genealogical DNA test before, in June 2005, as part of National Geographic's The Genographic Project. They were studying isolated, indigenous populations but asked for as many participants as possible to send in their DNA to create a map of the human journey. I thought it sounded so interesting - how could I not be a part of it?

The results of the test put you into a haplogroup - depending on what mutations they find in your DNA, they can group you with others with that same mutation back to a common ancestor/group of people. The tree starts with a common ancestor in Africa, and from their branches out, and those branches branch out, and again, and it's on those various branches that your DNA will place you. The National Geographic website explains it much better than I do, so if you want to know more, I highly recommend visiting the site: www.nationalgeographic.com/genographic.

Anyway, I learned that I had four mutations that put me in haplogroup T. 40-60 percent of Western Europeans belong to haplogroup H, and as someone who seems to constantly strive to be different, I was happy to find I didn't fall into that group. T, though the second most popular Western European haplogroup, is only found in 20 percent of the population. Anyway, T is considered one of the main genetic signatures of the Neolithic expansion, which is basically when, around 10,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers became farmers. A lot of Ts can be found in the Ukraine/Russia/Georgia region, which I found interesting, because I was following an Irish line. Obviously, 10,000 years ago there were no Irish people. They all had to come from somewhere. But it was interesting to learn that where many of my branch ended up beside Ireland.