Will Ftdna ever develop an autosomal test

[josh w.]

Autosomal tests have the potential to provide more information than Ydna or Mtdna tests alone and can serve to complement the results of such tests. In addition there have been significant developments in autosomal testing such as the HapMap project. Many of the questions raised on the forum might be aided by autosomal tests. For example, autosomal tests (through a process of subtraction) might be of value when there is no possible information about paternal lines. I recognize that there are interpretive and methodological problems with autosomal tests. Nevertheless many on the forum have found such tests to be of some value. Is Ftdna listening?

[Noaide]

I think they had autosomal tests before but they stopped it a few years ago.

[kat]

FamilyTree autosomal testing ?

Hello List ;I had the DNAPrint autosomal test done & was surprised at the results .Northern Euro ,which I expected to be 100 % was 50 %,Southern Euro was 35 % . I m adopted ,so I guess ,anything is possible ,but 35 % was a surprise. I would also like FamilyTree to begin this testing ,too. How accurate can the tests be ? I presume 35 % is too high to ignore % Thanks, KAT.

[Noaide]

I think FTDNA used DNAPrint to do their autosomal tests they offered before, but they stopped it because of concerns about accuracy.

Kat, it seems your taling about the Euro 1.0 test, not the AncestryByDNA 2.5 that test. The later one has a worldwide division.

[lgmayka]

Frankly, the most immediate promising approach I've seen, with respect to autosomal DNA, uses the X chromosome.

A female has two X chromosomes. [Let's ignore crossover (exchange of DNA chunks between chromosomes) for a minute.] She gets one X chromosome from her father. But since her father has one X and one Y, and got his Y from his father, his X must have come from his mother.

In other words, a female gets one of her X chromosomes from her mother, and one from her father's mother. By testing the right set of relatives, one can get a reasonable inheritance chain through process of elimination.

[josh w.]

lgmayka, very clever resolution. However, it wouldn't help in our situation. My kids' maternal grandfather was adopted and is now deceased. Only an autosomal test might give us a possible clue. Since there are a number of problems with tests now on the market we are waiting for the development of more precise, reliable and valid tests. One possibility is the Ancestrybydna test now in development.

If we did have Ydna and Mtdna results the picture would still be limited. Even assuming a fair degree of endogomy, the Ydna and Mtdna lines only represent two of at least tens of thousands of ancestral lines. The autosomes contain much more genetic information than these two lines. Even if maternal and paternal lines could not be unambiguously identified, the general information would still be of great value.

[josh w.]

P.S. The more geographically specific test in development is AncestrybyDna 3.0
Crossing over from the DnaTribes thread, Ydna and Mtdna tests are the sources of information on recent genealogical history because they involve "rapidly" mutating areas. However, autosomal tests have advantages of their own because they potentially tap many important aspects of human functioing, aspects not covered by Ydna and Mtdna tests. Some of these aspects may be of great import for genealogy e.g. physical appearance, susceptibility to diseases correlated with ethnicity, etc.

[EBurgess]

I would love for there to be good autosomal tests. I often wondered about all those lines in between the direct male and female lines of descent.

A few limitations however:

a person does not have genes from all of his ancestors, some are dropped off every generation.

Particular phenotypes like eye color, the shape of your nose or chin are all dependant on multiple genes working in concert.

How do you track these genes without having a huge base to compare it too? I mean it is not always straightforward to match y-dna to a surname for example.

Any autosomal test on the market today is going to be very vague about origins. What are the challenges?

There should be distinctive flags like SNPs in autosomal genes after all they have to have some degree of stability, if a zygote couldn't make acetylcholine it would not last very long!

But suppose you found these flags, how would you go about tracking where they came from? You would have to identify the different flavors of a gene and start mapping where they are recorded, but without massive participation would you be able to say anything about where a gene came from? It seems that only in extreme cases, like when a gene is linked to a rare disease is there an easy way to track it.

Would we need to go as far as Iceland did to make this a possibility?

That being said I am cautiously optimistic. The science is still young, many possibilities yet to be discovered.

[josh w.]

EBurgess, I completely agree. Autosomal testing is still in its infancy as far as commercial tests are concerned. To complicate matters, research strategies and statistics are not available for public consumption. The tests only sample a few loci out of the extremely large number of autosomal genes. Moreover, the loci are selected for their capacity to discriminate between geographical groups rather than their import for human functioing, although these two criteria are not mutually exclusive. As I noted on a different thread, the discriminating haplotypes appear to correlate with physical appearance in a predictable fashion. I am also optimistic that down the road this area of research will be of great value.

[EBurgess]

I think if we do get there with autosomes. It will shatter many ideas about ethnicity and nationalism.

Today we argue about whether R1b or I1a was here or there and which was the oldest etc... Imagine if you could see them all, oh the debates that would spawn!

Personally I drool at having the possibility of laying my pedigree before me and ticking off the contributors to my genes!

[ARTulsa]

Maternal Grandfather and Paternal Grandmother

This form of testing may be in it's infancy, but I may go ahead and get the best Autosomal test I can at this time because I, like another on this thread have an adopted Maternal Grandfather, who I happen to be nearly the spitting image of, who had five daughters and no sons, and has now passed on, and on the other side a Paternal Grandmother who can trace her ancestry right back through the Scots-Irish immigration to the Scottish-English Border Ridings, and yet I can know absolutely nothing about her genetically bytesting myself, and of course in looks my father takes after her, not his father. I will try and convince my father to get a mitochondrial test to check any mystery on that side, but on my mother's side, things seem kind of hopeless until this technology evolves. The science will get there. I'll just have the test done again when it does.

[tomcat]

See the ongoing thread on this forum "Beginner with CMH and J1 questions" for information pertaining to FTDNA and autosomal testing. FTDNA does not offer autosomal analysis but they have a new business partner DNA-Fingerprint that does the labwork for an outfit that does analysis - DNATribes. Ugdating and Upgrading DNATribes' test is, at present, far more economical than using Ancestry By DNA.

Tom

[josh w.]

Tomcat (or any informed member) are you aware of research which directly compares autosomal findings with Mtdna or Ydna results to see if there is a correlation. I get the impression from other research that there usually is a relationship. That is, Ydna or Mtdna studies sometimes mention that autosomal research yielded similar findings.

[josh w.]

My apologies to uninformed forum members. Of course all forum members are well informed. I meant informed on the specific issue.

[tomcat]

Tomcat (or any informed member) are you aware of research which directly compares autosomal findings with Mtdna or Ydna results to see if there is a correlation. I get the impression from other research that there usually is a relationship. That is, Ydna or Mtdna studies sometimes mention that autosomal research yielded similar findings.

DNATribes says that the geographic distribution of autosomal markers have been shown to conform to haplogroup distributions. SMGF collects autosomal results to correlate to mt- and y-haplogroup results. Don't have a study to cite. Bet you could Google-up something on y-dna and autosomal correlations.

Tom