Rare R1b results: 11 at DYS392 and 13 at DYS19A

[suginami]

I am helping a co-worker interpret his Y-37 marker DNA results.

I had my 37 Y DNA test about 6 months ago, and had a deep clade test done, so he thinks I'm an expert.

His grandfather was adopted, so he was hoping his results would help him understand about his biological paternal line.

Ancestry.com revealed that he is R1b, but he has two alleles that have very rare values for R1b.

He has 11 at 392 and 13 at 19a.

I see that those are extremely rare values for R1b.

Looking at a chart that shows STR allele frequencies for each haplogroup, 0.01% of R1b men have a value of 13 at 19a, and 0.0% have 11 at 392. This database has over 22,000 men in its database, and there are no reports of 11 at 392.

Can anyone help us in understanding what this means?

[Don Potter]

I am also DYS 392=11 and R1b. I only had 25 markers tested but if he uploads his results to Y-search.org he can compare them to mine. My user ID is "PEZBS" there. After he uploads the test results please post his user ID back here so I can compare mine to his also.
Thank you,
Don Potter Jr.

[MMaddi]

Something sounds fishy here. Perhaps Ancestry.com has it wrong - his haplogroup may not be R1b. They don't do SNP testing, so they are for some reason just predicting him to be R1b.

If you go to the table that you're referring to, at http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb....logy/yfreq.htm, you'll see that DYS392=11 is common in all European haplogroups except R1b. As for DYS19=13, the only European haplogroup where that is found, at an 85% level, is E3b (now known as E1b1b).

It is certainly possible that your co-worker has a couple of oddball marker values and is actually R1b, although that doesn't sound likely. One way to get a better handle on his haplogroup is to plug all 37 marker values into the Whit Athey haplogroup predictor, at http://www.hprg.com/hapest5/hapest5b/hapest5.htm, and see what are the two most likely haplogroups. Or, if this really matters to him, he can retest at FTDNA and get a second opinion and, if he wants it, a SNP test. If he does have baffling marker values that don't allow a clear prediction, he'd get a free backbone test that would confirm his basic haplogroup.

[suginami]

It is certainly possible that your co-worker has a couple of oddball marker values and is actually R1b, although that doesn't sound likely. One way to get a better handle on his haplogroup is to plug all 37 marker values into the Whit Athey haplogroup predictor, at http://www.hprg.com/hapest5/hapest5b/hapest5.htm, and see what are the two most likely haplogroups. Or, if this really matters to him, he can retest at FTDNA and get a second opinion and, if he wants it, a SNP test. If he does have baffling marker values that don't allow a clear prediction, he'd get a free backbone test that would confirm his basic haplogroup.

Well, I plugged his numbers into the Whit Atey haplogroup predictor, and it came out as 100% probability for R1b.

[suginami]

I input his 37 marker allele values at Ysearch.org.

User Id: B97F4

[Stevo]

I input his 37 marker allele values at Ysearch.org.

User Id: B97F4

He doesn't have any real close matches, but there are some who are 5 away at 27 markers, and they are all R1b1b2.

The haplotype looks like an R1b1b2 haplotype to me.

He's going to need to test with FTDNA and get a Deep Clade-R test if he wants to learn much.

[MMaddi]

Well, I plugged his numbers into the Whit Atey haplogroup predictor, and it came out as 100% probability for R1b.

What was the fitness score, the figure in the left column that includes all haplogroups? That's the more important indicator. A fitness score of 50 or above indicates it's probably that haplogroup. Below 50 would indicate there's a question what is the haplogroup.

[suginami]

I missed some of the conversions. His user ID has been updated.

DYS 441 is now 13.
DYS 463 is now 22.

I also missed two alleles: 17 at DYS 458 and 12 at DYS 461.

I apologize for the oversight. If he would've given me his password I could've simply uploaded the info automatically.

[suginami]

What was the fitness score, the figure in the left column that includes all haplogroups? That's the more important indicator. A fitness score of 50 or above indicates it's probably that haplogroup. Below 50 would indicate there's a question what is the haplogroup.

I re-entered the values, and he is still 100% for R1b, with a fitness score of 54.

[Don Potter]

Suginami,
A SNP test is what is needed for your co-worker. When I did mine it was about $100. It was well worth it since my haplotype did not appear to be from haplogroup R1b. It was and I am now waiting on the newest R1b SNP test, L21. The results are due December 8th I believe. DYS 392 = 11 can be R1b, because I am both.
Don

[GhostX]

I'm DYS392=11 and R1b (but not DYS19=13), and you're right, that combination is exceedingly rare. I spent some time recently combing through all the major geographic projects, as well as Ysearch, looking for other DYS392=11 people in R1b, and came up with just 79 of them (that's not examining every single project, just the big ones). That's an extremely small number, given the many tens of thousands of people in the databases.

I've been using that mutation, combined with 2 other uncommon mutations for my lineage (DYS447=26, and GATAH4=12), as sort of a "signature" for my lineage. The latter two are more common than DYS392=11, but the three never appear to occur as a grouping anywhere outside of my lineage (so please tell me if any of you share them all!).

DYS392=11 does appear in apparently completely unrelated R1b people, but I believe that is due to random convergence, rather than a shared very-distant ancestor. If it was a very-old mutation, then one would expect it to be more common, given its slow mutation rate.

[GhostX]

It occurred to me after I posted my reply that I didn't really answer your question, Suginami, as to what your coworker's results actually mean.

No single rare mutation in and of itself necessarily means anything significant. Mutations can happen at any time, and having a rare mutation could simply mean that it's a "private" mutation that just happens to occur in a particular recent lineage. It could also conceivably be a testing error, but there's no reason to think that this is the case unless a close relative of his gets tested and does not share that mutation.

I'm guessing that the chart you consulted is this one:

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~geneticgenealogy/yfreq.htm

If it is, then the .00 entry shown for DYS392=11 does not mean that this mutation doesn't occur in the database--it just means that it occurs in less than about 100 people in that database, so it got rounded to 0.00 frequency.

Anyway, your coworker really needs to compare his entire set of results against other people (e.g. by entering them into Ysearch), not just one or two rare mutations, but if he is a somewhat close match to somebody on the entire marker set, AND he shares that one or two rare mutations with his match(es), then that's strong evidence for common ancestry. How recent the common ancestry is depends on how many of the other markers match, and which ones they are.

When I said earlier that I use my set of three rare mutations as a "signature," for my lineage I only mean that I use that as a confirmation tool, but if the majority of the remaining markers don't match, then it's just a random occurrence.

[Deirwha]

This was a helpful post

for me and people like me who have a hard time understanding and retaining these details.

[suginami]

I'm guessing that the chart you consulted is this one:

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~geneticgenealogy/yfreq.htm

If it is, then the .00 entry shown for DYS392=11 does not mean that this mutation doesn't occur in the database--it just means that it occurs in less than about 100 people in that database, so it got rounded to 0.00 frequency.

Yes, that is the chart I consulted.

I am trying to persuade my co-worker to do the ancestry.com conversion kit here at FTDNA.com, and then do a SNP test.

[Deirwha]

for what it is worth

and the advice is free, I have concluded one should go for everything one can afford. I have done it incrementally and ended up doing it all anyway. What I learn each time is a little bit more but never enough.