Autosomal confusion

[Noaide]

Hi,
I was wondering if any of you guys could clear something up for me? I have someone on another group who is saying they have been told by DNAPrint that the AncestrybyDNA test does not reflect both parents ethnicities, only the mother for a woman or the father for a man. They are telling me that the whole thing was pointless for my Mum as it tells her nothing of her unknown fathers ethnic background and the result are only that of her mothers.
Have we been mislead? Was all that testing for nothing?

Sounds to me that there has been a mixup of the understanding of Y-DNA (father to son), mtDNA (mother to daughter) and autosomals (both parents to child).

Noaide

[tomcat]

...
When you say DNAT does it 50/50, is that worked out by singling out each allele on say one X then comparing them to other samples and if a pattern of say, NA scores comes out on one X then you've found out which parent has the NA ancestry?

The table with allele values is arranged in columns under the sex-typing Amelogenin results - a confusing arrangement about which I have written to Tribes.

One can ONLY speculate about which parent contributed which allele, but at each marker one allele came from each parent. E.g. a D3 14/15 means one parent gave a 14 and one a 15 for the D3 marker.

If your researches into allele incidence allow you to attribute one or another allele to one ethnicity over all others, then you may draw the conclusions you will. I have tried this and am left with an inconclusive feeling about the outcome - I can't prove I'm right.

[burto]

Hi Tomcat,
Thank you for that, that's what I thought....it's just worried me and got me doubting the year or so's amount of research and chatting on forums like this!
When you say DNAT does it 50/50, is that worked out by singling out each allele on say one X then comparing them to other samples and if a pattern of say, NA scores comes out on one X then you've found out which parent has the NA ancestry?

[tomcat]

I would like to read the proof offered by the poster on this matter as it would be a WONDERFUL thing if ABDNA is able to filter-out half of the autosome so as to reliably attribute results to one or another parent!

(I expect your correspondent is confused).

To the best of my present understanding, the ABDNA autosomal test DOES reflect inheritance from both parental lines but the proportion of inheritance from both parental lines may not be exactly 50-50. The DNAT autosomal test also reflects inheritance from both parental lines and the proportion is precisely 50-50.

[burto]

Hi Kathleen,
This person I'm talking about is on a private group and she basically said she's glad she's not done the test and wasted her money and the results Mum got (89% Euro 11% East Asian) are only from her mother and her father's DNA has no input in this score which has made me feel awful and stupid. I can understand the fact that some might argue the test is a waste of money in terms of how vague it can be sometimes (EA/NA for example) but I honestly thought autosomal tests were a reflection of both your parents, not just one like Y or mtDNA?

[Kathleen Carrow]

I think I read that and it didn't make much sense to me...I think that the person either did NOT understand the results or that is how the testing company told them the results in that way..that one autosomal allele came from one side and another came from the other..which they DO..but I do not belive we know which one UNLESS..
the allele is one that is supposedly "informative" like for skin color..and the parents were not admixed but clearly of two quite different ethnicities..

[burto]

Hi,
I was wondering if any of you guys could clear something up for me? I have someone on another group who is saying they have been told by DNAPrint that the AncestrybyDNA test does not reflect both parents ethnicities, only the mother for a woman or the father for a man. They are telling me that the whole thing was pointless for my Mum as it tells her nothing of her unknown fathers ethnic background and the result are only that of her mothers.
Have we been mislead? Was all that testing for nothing?