Please ignore mtDNA and Y chromosomal haplogroups

[PDHOTLEN]

If you go back 1,000 years, your autosomal DNA has been diluted to the point of irrelevance. But your mitochondrial haplotype is still going strong. It all depends on what you are interested in. I'm not especially looking for living relatives. I'm more interested in my long-range family tree, at least at this point.

[fbirder]

So I should ignore my Y and Mt results because they tell me a lot about a small number of distant ancestors. Instead I should only bother with autosomal testing so that I can learn very little about a slightly larger number of closer ancestors?

[josh w.]

Yes I think he is... if you pay attention to what he's saying. If you go back 10 generations, you have 1024 7th grt grandparents living in the 1700s. Only 2 of those are represented by your mtdna and ydna respectively. So yes he's right in that autosomal dna better reflects your genetic ancestry than does haplogroups. Nevertheless, the mapping of migrations of humans is a story told by mtdna and ydna, so they have their specific use. AND, as we slowly migrate to more complete genome testing, there is the opportunity for subclades to be better and better refined to the point where they do have meaningful genealogical implications.

I'm currently L193... which puts me in a small group with others of similar Celtic ancestry with a MRCA in the 1500 year range. If a few more snps are discovered, I may eventually belong to a subclade that only has say a few thousand men. At that point, I feel there is significance in the haplotyping. But he's right, don't lose sight that your maternal and paternal lines are INSIGNIFICANT to your complete genetic ancestry, at least in terms of the numbers of ancestors they represent.

I haven't seen anyone make an argument that despite such insignificance wrt the quantities of ancestors represented, there exists some special significance of ydna and mtdna that makes it genetically more important than the remaining genome. Anyone have an opinion that speaks to this question?

As has been stated, only Y and Mtdna can be informative about direct male and female lines respectively. My background is Ashkenazi and I have obtained valuable information about the migration paths of my ancestors from Y and Mtdna matches and research focused on my haplogroups. I have over 1800 FF matches but I have no idea as to how they are related to me, all four of my grandparents lived within 40 miles of each other.

[djknox]

Yes I think he is... if you pay attention to what he's saying. If you go back 10 generations, you have 1024 7th grt grandparents living in the 1700s. Only 2 of those are represented by your mtdna and ydna respectively. So yes he's right in that autosomal dna better reflects your genetic ancestry than does haplogroups. Nevertheless, the mapping of migrations of humans is a story told by mtdna and ydna, so they have their specific use. AND, as we slowly migrate to more complete genome testing, there is the opportunity for subclades to be better and better refined to the point where they do have meaningful genealogical implications.

I'm currently L193... which puts me in a small group with others of similar Celtic ancestry with a MRCA in the 1500 year range. If a few more snps are discovered, I may eventually belong to a subclade that only has say a few thousand men. At that point, I feel there is significance in the haplotyping. But he's right, don't lose sight that your maternal and paternal lines are INSIGNIFICANT to your complete genetic ancestry, at least in terms of the numbers of ancestors they represent.

I haven't seen anyone make an argument that despite such insignificance wrt the quantities of ancestors represented, there exists some special significance of ydna and mtdna that makes it genetically more important than the remaining genome. Anyone have an opinion that speaks to this question?

[Javelin]

Yes and no. They don't really tell you much about your overall genetic makeup, but they can be useful at tracing particular lineages. He's coming at this from a population genetics approach, not a genealogical one.

[gatty]

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2013/05/please-ignore-mtdna-and-y-chromosomal-haplogroups/

Is he right? ???