Approximate number of K1a1b1a in US?

[sushaskell]

Does anyone have an approximate number of K1a1b1a's living in the U.S.?
(thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions?). I'm trying to find some relatively close family members and wonder if it's like looking for a needle in a haystack, or if a FGS match is a significant clue.

Thanks!
Sue Haskell

[Bill Hurst]

Does anyone have an approximate number of K1a1b1a's living in the U.S.?
(thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions?). I'm trying to find some relatively close family members and wonder if it's like looking for a needle in a haystack, or if a FGS match is a significant clue.

Thanks!
Sue Haskell

Hi Susan,

So, the population of the USA is about 300 million. According to the MitoSearch stats page, K is 8.26% of those entries. That's about 25 million K's in the USA. Based roughly on a couple of my surveys and charts, K1a1b1a is about 12% of K. That's about 3 million in subclade K1a1b1a in the USA. Looking at the FGS results from the K Project and elsewhere, the modal haplotype (no additional mutations below 114T) is about one-third of the subclade. So someone in that haplotype could have about 1 million perfect FGS matches in the USA.

For everybody else, that particular haplotype seems to be the most common in K; so everybody else would have a smaller number of matches. Me, I don't even have a high-resolution HVR match.

Bill Hurst

[jloe]

In my personal opinion, mtdna is more useful in excluding close maternal ancestry. In terms of proof of recent relationship, it is much, much weaker.

Of course, there is the distinct possibility that relationship could be very recent or very distant, and there's just no way of knowing, unless you have such clues as close geographic proximity.

[Itzhak Epstein]

Does anyone have an approximate number of K1a1b1a's living in the U.S.?
(thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions?). I'm trying to find some relatively close family members and wonder if it's like looking for a needle in a haystack, or if a FGS match is a significant clue.

Thanks!
Sue Haskell

I just joined the project and noticed this post.

While I cannot respond accurately, I would start with the following two numbers:

According to Behar et al in http://www.familytreedna.com/pdf/43026_Doron.pdf ,

"K1a1b1a ... translates into 19.4% of contemporary Ashkenazi Jews..."

I would, conservatively, estimate that there are 6,000,000 genetic Ashkenazim in the US. 20% of them would be 1,200,000. Feel free to make your own assumptions.

Itzhak (K2a2a) Epstein

[jloe]

Yes, but not all k1a1b1a are the same. There are slightly different varieties. Consult Bill Hurst. Thus a full genetic match would be a subset of your 1,200,000 number.