Any update on the new My Origins & the Sephardic Cluster

[LPeer]

Any update on the new My Origins & the Sephardic Cluster?

[khazaria]

Razib Khan said MyOrigins will be updated by March. There won't be a new Sephardic cluster at that time.

The real way to find out if somebody has Sephardic ancestry is to look for Sephardic (and Ashkenazic and Hispanic) matches both inside Family Finder and GEDmatch and try to triangulate those segments where they match them with multiple additional matches, and check if the segment is painted largely with Mediterranean/Middle Eastern ethnic characteristics.

Sephardic matches who use these sites frequently have their origins in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Syria, Turkey, Greece, and Bulgaria. Some Sephardim also lived in Serbia, Macedonia, England, Egypt, Sudan, Romania, etc. Many of them have distinctive Sephardic surnames.

[josh w.]

Razib Khan said MyOrigins will be updated by March. There won't be a new Sephardic cluster at that time.

The real way to find out if somebody has Sephardic ancestry is to look for Sephardic (and Ashkenazic and Hispanic) matches both inside Family Finder and GEDmatch and try to triangulate those segments where they match them with multiple additional matches, and check if the segment is painted largely with Mediterranean/Middle Eastern ethnic characteristics.

Sephardic matches who use these sites frequently have their origins in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Syria, Turkey, Greece, and Bulgaria. Some Sephardim also lived in Serbia, Macedonia, England, Egypt, Sudan, Romania, etc. Many of them have distinctive Sephardic surnames.

Yes, use the spreadsheets at Gedmatch admixture programs. A number of the spreadsheets contain the averages for tested Sephardis. You can then compare your own results with Sephardi averages. Oracles also provide an estimate.

[josh w.]

Yes, use the spreadsheets at Gedmatch admixture programs. A number of the spreadsheets contain the averages for tested Sephardis. You can then compare your own results with Sephardi averages. Oracles also provide an estimate.

At Eurogenes' spreadsheet the only major difference between Sephardis and Ashkenazis is that Ashkenazis have a larger Baltic component. This was to be expected. There is a slight tendency for Sephardis to have higher East Med and Red Sea percentages. This also was to be expected since the Sephardic sample was from Greece and Turkey.

[LPeer]

How were some of the Gedmatch calculators able to get a reliable reference sample for a Sephardic cluster, when it seems it is so difficult to accomplish?

[josh w.]

How were some of the Gedmatch calculators able to get a reliable reference sample for a Sephardic cluster, when it seems it is so difficult to accomplish?

I don't know and can only speculate. Sephardic samples may be heterogeneous, i.e. results may vary from one sample to another depending on location. Anusim may show a somewhat different pattern, compared to Greek Jews or conversos still living in Iberia. That is, there may be different admixtures depending on the 'host' country. . I know where the Eurogenes Sephardic group is from, but the source of the data may be difficult to find since there usually is no attribution as to the source of the data. Admixture programs may only present results from a single region. FTDNA does not borrow from original research as do the Gedmatch programs. There may be other problems but FTDNA has not explained the delay.

[josh w.]

I don't know and can only speculate. Sephardic samples may be heterogeneous, i.e. results may vary from one sample to another depending on location. Anusim may show a somewhat different pattern, compared to Greek Jews or conversos still living in Iberia. That is, there may be different admixtures depending on the 'host' country. . I know where the Eurogenes Sephardic group is from, but the source of the data may be difficult to find since there usually is no attribution as to the source of the data. Admixture programs may only present results from a single region. FTDNA does not borrow from original research as do the Gedmatch programs. There may be other problems but FTDNA has not explained the delay.

If I was not clear, the authors of the Gedmatch programs do not collect the original samples. These samples are collected by basic researchers. The collected raw data is then analyzed by the admixture programs. I have no idea as to where a possible Ftdna Sephardic sample might be from. I was informed two years ago that they were collecting such a sample

[Peradam]

How were some of the Gedmatch calculators able to get a reliable reference sample for a Sephardic cluster, when it seems it is so difficult to accomplish?

No idea why the samples aren't used by FTDNA and other companies, but as Josh said, they were sourced from research. I don't know where the Eurogenes samples come from but it's presumably the same as Dodecad and HarappaWorld, which use a sample of 19 Sephardic Jews from Bulgaria (8), Portugal (1) and Turkey (10) taken from the Behar 2010 research paper. It's also the source for various other samples. The paper's supplementary info can be found here if you're interested: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...re09103-s1.pdf

[LPeer]

Thanks for the additional information Josh and Peradam.

[winner]

Thanks for the additional information Josh and Peradam.

I was informed that FTDNA has got samples of Sephardic from Morocco ( I think I am related to them, because I was at a beit knesset of Sephardic from Morocco, in Israel), but those samples aren't enough yet. They are still struggling over more samples.

[josh w.]

No idea why the samples aren't used by FTDNA and other companies, but as Josh said, they were sourced from research. I don't know where the Eurogenes samples come from but it's presumably the same as Dodecad and HarappaWorld, which use a sample of 19 Sephardic Jews from Bulgaria (8), Portugal (1) and Turkey (10) taken from the Behar 2010 research paper. It's also the source for various other samples. The paper's supplementary info can be found here if you're interested: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...re09103-s1.pdf

The Eurogenes borrowed sample was from the Atzmon study (2010). The sample involved a mixture of Greek and Turkish Jews

[josh w.]

I was informed that FTDNA has got samples of Sephardic from Morocco ( I think I am related to them, because I was at a beit knesset of Sephardic from Morocco, in Israel), but those samples aren't enough yet. They are still struggling over more samples.

Yes, that's what I was told two years ago. There was also an attempt to get a sample similar to Atzmon's. I was also informed that there was significant overlap between Moroccan Jews and host country samples. I am not sure why this was a problem since Ashkenazis have an East European or Baltic component in their composite. Perhaps the Moroccan admixture was much greater.

[Peradam]

The Eurogenes borrowed sample was from the Atzmon study (2010). The sample involved a mixture of Greek and Turkish Jews

Weird, I thought he'd be using the same dataset. I appreciate the info

[josh w.]

Weird, I thought he'd be using the same dataset. I appreciate the info

That is a problem. New research is popping up all the time. There is no standardized dataset

[Septem27]

Was there any word of the implementation of a chromosome painting feature?