DNAPrint results: Significant Asian component in some Indo-European populations

[cfkerchner]

I am a Pennsylvania German, aka Pennsylvania Deustch/Dutch, on all branches of my Pedigree Chart for at least 8 generations. See this link for more on the PA German population group.

http://www.kerchner.com/padutch.htm

My genealogy has been solidly proven via 30 years of traditional genealogical research and also has been verified on the direct male and direct female lines via Y-DNA and mtDNA tests. My Pedigree Chart for 8 generations in all branches is PA German which is a mixture of Germans, French Huguenot, Swiss, and a very small bit of English. The PA Germans lived for generations as an isolated population group in PA who usually married within their own kind, up until my generation. They also had their own language dialect for over 200 years. All my ancestors for 8 generations back lived and intermarried within a 20 mile radius of where I live today, and intermarried within their own kind. My parents were even 4th cousins of each other as are many people from early settlers of the areas of Lehigh and Berks County PA. My parents even spoke the PA German dialect, as did their parents, and their parents, etc. Up until my generation their were very, very few East Asians, i.e., Chinese, Korean, or Japanese in this area. There is no known East Asian marriage or relationships, or even casual contact or even geographic proximity, in any of my lines on my chart. Needless to say, I was very, very surprised with the results of my DNAPrint "geographic ancestry" test results when I received it, and it showed a 21% East Asian content and 79% European instead of a 100% European which I had expected. In discussing this with AncestrybyDNA lab personnel I have learned that surprisingly to them some other PA Germans tested have had similar significant high teen, low 20's% East Asian content results. At present they have no clear explanation as to why.

So I have introduced my theory to them and others, which is that maybe the PA German immigrants who came to this area in the early 1700's may have brought with them a significant East Asian genetic content, possibly left over from the various "Asian hordes" invasions of Europe at various times, such as the Huns and Mongols, and preserved over there in the isolated upper Rhine River basin valleys for hundreds of years. The HUNS sacked the city of Mainz on the Rhine River and made it into France and nothern Italy circa 454 A.D. attacking the Western Roman Empire controlled regions. Typically these barbarian invaders killed all the males and took the women as wives and captives. Large percentages of the indigenous population were killed. Other asian type population group invasions have occured between then and the 1500's with similar devastating results on the indigenous populations. So these asian hordes invasion could have left a significant genetic content within the indigenous "European" population in certain areas. And since the immigrant ancestors of the PA Germans who came to PA in the early 1700's also lived as an isolated population in the inland counties of s.e. Pennsylvania, marrying within their own kind and avoiding the "English" as they called outsiders, for about 200 years they may have preserved this significant Asian genetic content to this time. If so, this would be a significant discovery about this unique "European" population group in Pennsylvania.

Further research is needed to prove or disprove this theory. I, and some others, have been trying to get some PhD type geneticists to look at this further. Hopefully more "pure blood" (per their Pedigree Chart) PA Germans, aka PA Deutsch/Dutch, can be tested to obtain more data, and hopefully come to some conclusions.

Comments welcome.

Charles Kerchner
http://www.kerchner.com/kerchner.htm

[admin]

East-Asian Results

Please look at the following FAQ just posted at FTDNA:

http://www.ftdna.com/faqdnaprint.html#q1.4

[cfkerchner]

"East Asian" content in Europeans

Max,

Thanks for pointing out that new FAQ answer in the FamilyTreeDNA website.

As you know I have been pursuing this issue with Bennett Greenspan with your company, and lab personnel with AncestrybyDNA, since my DNAPrint results first came back over a month ago. I and others have suggested to AncestrybyDNA staff that the term "East Asian" probably needs to be changed to drop that word East and drop the focus in their report as the source being Chinese, Korean, and Japanese content for that genetic content, and change it to something else, something much broader, such as "Asiatic" or some other broader term. The current limiting term of "East Asian" as well as the explanation of that term in the accompanying report and the geographic ancestry maps provided by AncestrybyDNA strongly indicate a Chinese, Korean, or Japanese source of the genetic content. That is obviously not true and misleading and the source of much confusion to us customers. I am sure over time this will be resolved. But in the meantime a more general description and explanation needs to be provided to customers for the "Asiatic" portion of their genetic content. And if I and other thought-to-be pure "Europeans" who have been tested with this new test, who have been very vocal in calling this "surprising" and "interesting" new bit of information to the attention of AncestrybyDNA, and geneticists, and as a result they then evolve and update their knowledge and reporting terminolgy, then all will be happy to have helped. I think the large number of people being tested as the result of using Genetics to aide Genealogy will provide lots and lots of new data and new information for the geneticists to publish about. I have seen much in this industry evolve in the last 2 years or so. So much is understood better now that was not so clear 2 years ago. Prior to this Genealogy by Genetics revolution a relatively very small number of people had been tested worldwide. But, it is also important that AncestrybyDNA is 100% certain that the marker SNP's they are using to indicate Asiatic genetic content is 100% correct too. So I and others have asked them to look into that too, to double check the measuring stick. They have to be 100% sure the measuring stick is 100% accurate with a new test such as this and be willing to evolve based on new information. The reports and maps need to be redone to reflect this new information.

These Asiatic results for many "European" descendants of early immigrants to what is now the USA, for this new type of test, has been very surprising to many people. Much new knowledge will come out of this, in my opinion.

I am sure FamilyTreeDNA will be on the cutting edge and a leader in the effort to improve and refine this new type of test ... DNAPrint ... to determine the geographic ancestry makeup of one's genome. Your company has shown they have done so in the past when new information develops. Keep up the good work.

Charles Kerchner
http://www.kerchner.com/surnames.htm

[Duane Watts]

East Asian admixtures - question

In the situation you describe where an entire population group seems to have roughly the same degree of admixture, and the population group has been fairly insular for a long time, wouldn't a couple of things logically follow?

1) If this is a population group that has been stable for millenia, averaged over a large sampling of the population, shouldn't the percentages of males whose Y-chromosomes are East Asian be about the same percentage as the DNA print percentages of the population as a whole?

2) if the Y-chromosome percentage is significantly greater than the DNA print percentages wouldn't that lend support to the idea of conquering males interposing themselves into the population? Corollary, if this were true, shouldn't the percentage of East Asian mitochondrial DNA be extremely small?

3) conversely, if the incidence of mitochondrial DNA is comparatively large and the incidence of Y-chromosome is small, then the more logical idea would be that the ancestral females were imported into the population rather than the males.

just an idea. -duane

[cfkerchner]

Re: East Asian admixtures - question

Duane,

Thanks for your input. I don't have the knowledge to answer your questions. But you raise interesting questions. Possibly other readers of this thread can answer you.

For what it is worth my male Y Chromosome Haplogroup is R1b, a European group. So based on that, the male contributor of my Y chromosome was definitely European, and not Asian. My mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) group is H, "Helena of the Seven Daughters of Eve fame". The H female group is also a European group, and thus not Asian. So my surprising 21% "East-Asian" content must be from the other branches in my tree, i.e., not in my direct male paternal line nor in my direct female maternal line. These Y-DNA and mtDNA facts from earlier tests in those areas, and my 30 years of research into my solid, all PA German ancestry back at least 8 generations in all branches of my tree, just makes my 21% "East-Asian" and 79% Indo-European BioGeographica Ancestry (BGA) results from the DNAPrint test very puzzling to me indeed, and as I said before ... very surprising to this Pennsylvania German, aka PA Deutschman/Dutchman. :-)

Also by way of additional information, I did learn recently in another online DNA and Genealogy forum that the DNAPrint test does not include the two sex chromsomes in their analysis. AncestrybyDNA does not use the XY or the XX chromosome pair which determines are gender. They only use the 22 pairs of non-sex chromosomes which contain the recombinant nuclear DNA in the 44 other chromosomes, which comes from all your ancestors. So the DNAPrint test is based on 44 chromosomes of the 46. Also, they do not use the mtDNA in the DNAPrint test. They only use the nuclear DNA.

One thing that keeps coming up in my mind is what and how large a sample base of people was used to obtain and define the SNP's that define a person as 100% European, and what and how large a sample base people was used to obtain and define the SNP's that define a person as 100% "East-Asian". If the model being used is not totally accurate, under the scrutiny of the much new information being obtained by large numbers of so called Europeans being tested by the DNAPrint test, then the model needs to be revisited and maybe redefined. And some terms need to be redefined.

As I said before I think the term "East-Asian" used in the AncestrybyDNA DNAPrint(tm) results category for Asian content, and the maps and reports provided with the DNAPrint test, are very misleading. The term and reports and maps makes one think that one has Chinese, Korean, or Japanese genetic content, which is probably definitely not true at all. As I have said, I think the test could be picking up Asian content in general, which probably is from the north-central asian hordes, Huns and Mongols or artic/northern peoples, etc., which moved west into Europe at various times. AncestrybyDNA should not specifically call this content East-Asian. What they should do is call those markers "Asian" markers instead, and not East-Asian. Asian or Asiatic is a broader, more inclusive term. And likewise the DNAPrint maps and reports need to be more general and broader for these Asian results, explaining the numerous possibilities for this content. Just thinking out loud.

By way of additional information, at the suggestion of staff at AncestrybyDNA the company which developed the DNAPrint test ... several weeks ago I had sent an email about these surprising East-Asian results for me to Mark Schriver, PhD, a noted geneticist at Penna State University, who has published on Asian migrations, etc. So far he has not answered me.

Charles Kerchner
Emmaus PA
http://www.kerchner.com/kerchner.htm
http://www.kerchner.com/kerchdna.htm

[cfkerchner]

Re: Re: East Asian admixtures - question

Max and Bennett,

As further comments to Duane Watts ideas in the prior post by him, FamilyTreeDNA probably has access to a fairly large number of people who have had all three tests done on them needed to test Duane's idea, i.e., the Y-DNA, mtDNA, and DNAPrint (BGA) tests. The analysis could be done by using the Haplogroup for Y-DNA and mtDNA results to keep it simpler, and see if there is any correlation or not as Duane suggested in his ideas for test. I have had all three tests: My Y-DNA Haplogroup is R1b (definitely European), my mtDNA group is H (definitely European), and my DNAPrint BGA came out and surprised me as 21% East-Asian (Asian or Asiatic probably a better term) and 79% Indo-European, i.e. European. And as you know I have repeatedly stated my 8 generation pedigree chart is solidly European per my 30 years of research. I suggest your staff start a table, collect the necessary data, and do some statistical analysis given the ideas Duane presented and see if the Y-DNA and mtDNA data results correlates or doesn't with the BGA results. As you get more and more people tested for all three tests the confidence level of any conclusions will increase. I think it would be a good thing to do and then share the initial results with us customers interested in this forum and with your supplier, AncestrybyDNA. Just a suggestion.

Sincerely,

Charles Kerchner
Emmaus PA
http://www.kerchner.com/kerchner.htm
http://www.kerchner.com/kerchdna.htm
http://www.kerchner.com/surnames.htm

[Dina]

Re: Re: Re: East Asian admixtures - question

I will be watching this thread and any developments with interest. I am ethnic Bulgarian, and though I certainly have an interest in genealogy I came to the site after seeing a segment on the news where a Dominican woman had a DNA race profile done to see just what her racial make-up was.

Now, I'm not going to go into a history lesson here but the Bulgars were their own distinct Central Asian group, and some Bulgarians look quite Asian, and some look generally Mediterranean, even within the same families. Race is certainly not DNA, but I am still interested to see what kind of stamp was left on my own background by various races (BG being a crossroads country.)

I've done a lot of study over the years on the ancient Bulgars and Central Asian tribes at large. Is it so hard to think that there was so much push and pull among populations in the distant past?

-- EDIT --

I realized belatedly that my posting looked a little contradictory. I realize that race cannot really be tested via DNA, but it was presented as so in the news segment, which is why I phrased it in that way referring to the segment and the Dominican woman.

[admin]

Re: Re: Re: East Asian admixtures - question

Originally posted by cfkerchner
Max and Bennett,

As further comments to Duane Watts ideas in the prior post by him, FamilyTreeDNA probably has access to a fairly large number of people who have had all three tests done on them needed to test Duane's idea, i.e., the Y-DNA, mtDNA, and DNAPrint (BGA) tests. The analysis could be done by using the Haplogroup for Y-DNA and mtDNA results to keep it simpler, and see if there is any correlation or not as Duane suggested in his ideas for test. I have had all three tests: My Y-DNA Haplogroup is R1b (definitely European), my mtDNA group is H (definitely European), and my DNAPrint BGA came out and surprised me as 21% East-Asian (Asian or Asiatic probably a better term) and 79% Indo-European, i.e. European. And as you know I have repeatedly stated my 8 generation pedigree chart is solidly European per my 30 years of research. I suggest your staff start a table, collect the necessary data, and do some statistical analysis given the ideas Duane presented and see if the Y-DNA and mtDNA data results correlates or doesn't with the BGA results. As you get more and more people tested for all three tests the confidence level of any conclusions will increase. I think it would be a good thing to do and then share the initial results with us customers interested in this forum and with your supplier, AncestrybyDNA. Just a suggestion.

Sincerely,

Charles Kerchner
Emmaus PA
http://www.kerchner.com/kerchner.htm
http://www.kerchner.com/kerchdna.htm
http://www.kerchner.com/surnames.htm

Dear Charles,

The idea is interesting and we will check its feasibility and priority against a series of projects that are going on over here.
Thank you

[cfkerchner]

Re: European with East Asian admixtures - experiment

Originally posted by max
Dear Charles,

The idea is interesting and we will check its feasibility and priority against a series of projects that are going on over here.
Thank you

Max,

If I may suggest, I think the statistical look see and experiment should be very, very simply designed initially.

Cull you database for people who have predominantly European with some significant East-Asian admixture indicated by the DNAPrint test, say at least 10% or more East Asian. Then cull that database for people who also have had both the Y=DNA test and mtDNA test done. Then take a look at the resulting table for any patterns which would call for more scientific investigation. Or do it the exact opposite way and find people with 100% European Y and mtDNA groups and then see how the DNAPrint results stack up.

I am not a statistician but I think the table elements should be: Y haplogroup=European, mtDNA group=European, DNAPrint= ??% European and ??? East Asian.

A pattern example would be, let's say, if 90% of the people in the Europeans in the table who have been tested on all three tests consider themselves European caucasians and have a Y haplogroup and a mtDNA pointing to European origins, and yet 33% or more of them have significant East Asian content from the DNAPrint test, then I would say further scientific investigation is in order by the anthropologists and geneticists who designed this relatively new DNAPrint test, and made the assignment of some of the SNP's in their model as mutually exclusive, pure East Asian origin and totally indicative of East Asian origin, when maybe they are not. Some of these SNP's may also be in ancient European populations in large number too, and thus some of the SNP's being labeled as 100%, purely indicative of East Asian, may in fact be "Eurasian" and common to a much larger continental area than originally thought, and thus not as useful and as clear as thought to be, in sorting out people as being European or East Asian percentages.

An outcome could be that the underlying science of the DNAPrint test needs to be adjusted because of the new information or our understanding of the European population group needs to be revisited. I have read some papers somewhere suggesting an East Asian admixture about 5% of some European populations. What if it is 33%? And what if, as I said, these SNP's are not just solely East Asian but are "Eurasian", etc. With either answer it would be useful to learn. Look at how our understanding of the atom and the universe and the big-bang theory has evolved and how the prior "solid" science had to be modified.

Anyway, the experiment can initially be set up very simply, just to see if a pattern jumps out and if further study is warranted by the "heavy duty" anthropologists and geneticists who designed this initial DNAPrint test.

Looking forward to hearing the results of your in-house experiment.

Charles

http://www.kerchner.com/kerchdna.htm

[Duane Watts]

Re: Re: Re: Re: East Asian admixtures - question

[I'M NOT A STATISTICIAN EITHER, but it seems logical to me that if the Asian ancestry were entirely imposed by Asian males, the incidence of Asian Y-chromosome should be about twice the percentage of the Asian DNA, while the incidence of Asian mitochondrial DNA would be zero.

If the Asian ancestry were entirely imposed by females, then the incidence of Asian mitochondrial DNA should be twice, and the incidence of Asian Y should be zero.

This, of course assumes equal fertility rates averaged across the entire population through a presumably enormous number of generations, but if the population has been stable and insular and has had a common culture & religion it should be a reasonable assumption. In any case I can't think of any alternative except to make that assumption.

[cfkerchner]

Suggestion to improve DNAPrint "East Asian" graphic & verbal definitions

Suggestion to improve East Asian graphic and verbal definitions in DNAPrint reports
New thoughts on my points posted previously:

I just found this. Mongolia is considered to be part of "East" Asia according to this
source. Thus Genghis Kahn's and other Mongolian tribe invasions of Europe in the
last 800-2000 years is again a factor worth considering. The definition of what
constitutes "East" Asia is a possible solution to the confusion about the term "East"
Asian in the DNAPrint test, and the surprising significant "East Asian" content being
found in many Causcasian Europeans.

http://www.ipu.org/parline-e/regions.htm

Including Mongolia in the definition of "East" Asia solves a lot of issues in this debate
as to how the content got to Europe in large numbers, imo. DNAPrint/AncestrybyDNA
needs to look at this and then consider rotating that line in the below graphic which
demarks where Group IV begins, which they call the "East Asia" population group,
for the purposes of explaining their DNAPrint test results, in my opinion. Drawing 3
lines on the world as they have is a pretty broad brush. And their line where it is
now drawn for Group IV restricts the East Asian area to too fine an area and is too
far east as now drawn. They have way too much of the Asian continent in Group III
and not enough of it in Group IV.

They are graphically restricting the definition of the "East" Asian Group IV population
group to a graphic definition of "Eastern China, Korea, and Japan ... and North-east
Siberia". They verbally exclude Australia as an aside. This limited definition of what
constitutes "East Asian" is what is causing a lot of consternation to Caucasian
Europeans trying to figure out how they got significant percentages of alleged
"Chinese, Korean, or Japanese" content in their genome, as is implied by the graph
as now drawn. Large numbers of people did not migrate in the last 500-2000 years
form what DNAPrint is now graphically defining as East Asia, to what is now Europe.
I believe this is what is causing many of the questions about the "East" Asian
results. DNAPrint needs to improve their reports and website to explain better. The
definition for the population group IV of "East" Asia in their reports needs to be
explained better and widened a bit. Including western China and Mongolia in Group
IV does provide a logical explanation of how a large "East Asian" content could have
gotten to Europe in large numbers. The Asian hordes invasions known to history ...
the Huns and Mongolian tribe invasions.

In the graphic in their product "profiles" page, see link below, the delineating line
between Group III and Group IV is drawn too far east and shows the line leaning to
the right when in my opinion it should be at least vertical if not leaning a little to the
left. Using the pivot point at about Burma they should rotate the line 60-90 degrees
CCW. They need to include more of western China and all of Mongolia which is
probably the source of many of the "East" Asian markers in the European genomes.
Migrations certainly didn't come from "eastern China, Korea, and Japan" into Europe
in large numbers to Europe, according to my reading about human migrations in the
last 2000 years. See the graphic in their site below, which I think causes much
confusion to users of their product. This graph and other parts of their report need
to be adjusted accordingly. Just my humble opinion.

http://www.ancestrybydna.com/profiles.html

Charles Kerchner
Emmaus PA
http://www.kerchner.com/kerchner.htm
http://www.kerchner.com/kerchdna.htm

[admin]

Charles,

Did you send the above to Tony Frudakis?

[cfkerchner]

Originally posted by max
Charles,

Did you send the above to Tony Frudakis?

Max,

Yes I have. Tony agreed with some of my criticisms of the interpretations of results and inferences being derived by customers from the current graphics and reports and he said the company probably needed to improve some of the things in their website and reports and that he would forward to the suggestion to others in his organization and consider the suggestion. But I think the ultimate determiner of things in their organization is Dr. Shriver at Penna State University, who did the background research and developed this test. And he has not answered any of my emails to date. This is the first test of this type that I know of. It is now being subjected to the "test of time" and the "test of large numbers of users". As a result lots of new information and questions come up. Dr. Shriver needs to look at the new information, and not just brush it all off as "anecdotal". The test idea may be terrific but maybe the first version, i.e., set of Ancestry Informative Markers (AIMs) needs to adjusted a little more to be more decerning of exactly what is mutual exclusively a European and East Asian marker. The current set of AIMs may have some very ancient Eurasian markers common to both population groups, but since they only sampled "northern Europeans" and maybe didn't sample enough Caucasian Europeans from other areas, say southern Germany, they didn't pick up that these ancient markers are also in a big percentage of the European population too. So those ancient markers being shared in common with Europeans and East Asians would be better called "Eurasian" markers and should not have been included in the set used to determine exclusive East Asian ancestry. I think another well qualified PhD type anthropologist or population geneticist needs to look at the underlying sampling process and studies and validation studies and then if necessary, ask some questions too, and then comment on this whole issue of BGA, and this test's results in particular in regards to the "East Asian" markers issue. Just my humble opinion.

Charles
http://www.kerchner.com/kerchdna.htm

[cfkerchner]

PA German (aka PA Dutch) Ethnic Group DNA Project. Re. East Asian content

Announcing the PA German (aka PA Dutch) Ethnic Group DNA Project

I have started a new type project for Genealogy by Genetics, an ethnic group study project, using all the tools: the DNAPrint BGA test, the Y-DNA test, and the mtDNA test, to gather more information concerning the unexpected, significant East Asian content found in my own test, and reportedly by a significant number of Caucasian Europeans when tested with the DNAPrint Version 2.0 BioGeographic Ancestry (BGA) test, and to test my hypothesis and to come to some conclusions after studying the additional data. Here is the link to the project website.

http://www.kerchner.com/p-gerdna.htm

Charles
http://www.kerchner.com/kerchner.htm

[whitkeen]

Does that test give you a time frame? I was under the impression that haplogroups and haplotypes might reflect migrations that are 10,000 or more years ago. In that case, an "east asian" haplotype might reflect a migration that went north into the Caucasus, then split east and west with a large percentage of those people going east to northern asia, and a smaller group going west into europe. However, there was a newspaper article in the NY Times about Ghenghis Khan and sons being ancestral to maybe as many as 25% of the people of the world.(or of Europe and Asia) Interesting concept. Might fit with your project.I don't know where to find the article, but a search might find it. It was within the last month.