When will you see BIG Y results?

When will we see the beginning of the SNP Tsunami from the large number of BIG Y tests many of you have ordered? 

Got a calendar on the wall for the first quarter of 2014? Got a dart? ;-)

I'm in batch 542 (see blog earlier post) which was originally predicted to be returned 12/31/2013. What great fun it would have been to decode Y-SNPs on New Years Eve!  This predicted date on my FTDNA page -- as many of you probably know -- has now eroded to 2/28/2014. The FAQ on FTDNA’s site has always said a less specific February, 2014.

On December 6^th Janine Cloud, Customer Service Manager @ FTDNA wrote:

FYI: When a kit is batched it automatically gets an expected results date. Unfortunately, it is batch-specific, not test specific. There's not currently a mechanism to set that message by test type until AFTER it's been batched.

 For example, everyone knows that a Y-12 will get results faster than a Y-111, yet both get the same expected results date if they're batched at the same time.

 Since everyone who ordered Big Y already had testing done with us, the orders batched each Wednesday as usual, even though the test has not begun running yet. Consequently, those Big Y tests got the same expected results date as all the other tests in the batch. With regular tests, we don't know that the whole group of tests will not be ready at the end of that expected results dates, but with the Big Y we did, so rather than wait until the end of the block of time, we arranged for those dates to be changed up front to help mitigate some of the potential for frustration over the test not being completed by that initial date.

 Normally those dates are updated the day after the expected date, but in this case there was reason to wait until Jan 1st, etc. to make the change. 

Then a few days later from Thomas Krahn who used to manage the SNP testing in the FTDNA lab but now runs his own company:

Good news for Big Y! I was at FTDNA yesterday and Max has told me that they have the first successful runs in house completed. He didn't say on which machine they were running (MiSeq or HiSeq) and he didn't comment on possible barcoding problems, but this gives us hope that some customers may not need to wait until next year to see their results.

We have also discussed the transfer of customer samples. It is important that those who want their samples transferred need to contact Max directly (max@genebygene.com) because apparently a commitment from the FTDNA customer support is not sufficient. However if Max approves them himself, then there doesn't seem to be a problem that samples can get transferred. Usually 50ul are sufficient. However if there is a way to get a new sample, then both companies would prefer that method instead of a sample transfer. Only samples that cannot be re-done or where laws prohibit taking a new sample should consider the transfer.

Also good news for FGC customers: YSEQ has returned the first results to our customers today. Most of the FGC markers could be confirmed right away with Sanger sequencing. It seems that Greg has done a very good job with analyzing the data. In addition to that we have kicked out a bunch of SNP candidates on repetitive and X homologue sequences during the primer design phase, so that the remaining FGC markers were almost all a hit on the first try. Especially I'd like to point out the FGC5496 marker for R1b-DF13 researchers because it has also been confirmed in another sample of the 1000 genomes project. This marker is available at http://shop.yseq.net/ already.

If you aren't confused yet, you haven’t been paying attention! Let me know when you get your results.

Happy Holidays!!

Your Paternal Line Just Got MUCH Longer!

Genealogists get very excited when we are able to extend our ancestral lines back another generation. I know I sure do. What should we feel if our paternal line got extended thousands of  generations further back in time? That is what is about to happen for all of us.

“Y-chromosome Adam” just got a much earlier birthday. New research soon to be submitted for publication will claim that “Y-chromosome Adam” lived much earlier than had been established by earlier research.  Until now the scientific community has told the human story with “Mitochondrial Eve” living much earlier than “Y-chromosome Adam”. If you have followed the creation story, you may wonder how that is possible. Didn't “Adam” and “Eve” have to live at the same time? The new research suggests “Y-chromosome Adam” lived thousands of generations earlier than we were led to believe just a year ago. This could make him earlier than “Mitochondrial Eve”.

Actually, both “Mitochondrial Eve” and “Y-chromosome Adam” lived later than the Biblical Adam and Eve. Mitochondrial Eve is the mythical woman who is a place holder for the earliest woman who had at least two daughters who have an unbroken line of female descendants who have preserved and passed along her mitochondrial DNA down to currently living offspring. In like manner, Y-chromosome Adam is the mythical male placeholder who had at least two sons who have an unbroken line of male descendants who have preserved and passed along his Y-chromosome DNA down to currently living offspring.

This discovery was first investigated by Bonnie Schrack, a volunteer DNA project administrator and “citizen scientist”. She was trying to place a member of her project into the appropriate haplogroup. When he didn’t seem to fit any of the existing groups, she turned to Thomas Krahn, Technical Laboratory Manager for Family Tree DNA (FTDNA) and Dr. Michael Hammer of the University of Arizona for assistance. A paper outlining their findings is in the final stages of preparation and is expected to be published early next year.

Those of us attending the 8^th International Conference on Genetic Genealogy in Houston this past weekend got an advance peek at their results and early reactions show great excitement:

Matty K , in response to a Dienekes blog post said: “Sounds like one of those "everything you know is wrong" discoveries.”

". . . it's hard to realize you're living history while it happens . . . . "
- quote from private email from Ann P. Turner to Georgia Kinney-Bopp.

Is it really that monumental? We will have to wait for the reaction of the scientific community to the publication of the paper in early 2013.