Dr D FINALLY Joins Twitter

After much prodding from my wife I FINALLY joined Twitter yesterday as @DrDDigs. If you wish to be notified when I make new posts, you can follow me there. I was enticed into creating my Twitter persona so that I would be able to tweet when my special, two part, DNA Day post is ready to announce. I hope the last part of that grand delivery to fall into place by late tomorrow.

Sales on DNA Tests

Several companies that test DNA for genealogical purposes are currently offering sales or will be by this weekend.

atDNA Tests

23andMe is currently offering 20% discounts on ADDITIONAL kits after the first when multiple kits are ordered at the same time. This sale is good for those who wish to test several family members. This is an atDNA test.

AncestryDNA is offering a Mothers' Day Sale. It may be a little hard to find but clicking on the link in this paragraph should get you there. It is not clear how long the sale price of $89 will be available for this atDNA test. Buyers are told if they order before May 1st, the kit should be delivered by Mothers' Day.

yDNA Tests

FTDNA is offering two separate sales for a tightly defined period. The sale begins at 12:01 AM CDT on DNA Day, Friday April 25th and ends on 11:59 PM on April 29th. Y-DNA SNPs will be 20% off from April 25 - 29. In addition, the Y-DNA 37 test will be 20% off the retail price. As usual with kits ordered from FTDNA, you may qualify for additional discounts by ordering through a surname or geographic project. Please note that there are two separate tests here. Because these two tests are aimed at different audiences, it is likely that one customer will not be ordering both at the same time. The yDNA 37 STR marker test is a good entry level test for men. It is to test the paternal line which usually corresponds with the surname. On the other hand the individual SNP tests are for more advanced testers who already have some idea about their deep ancestry haplogroup and want to define it more precisely.

YSEQ is also offering individual SNP tests in direct competition with the sale of such tests at FTDNA. Again let me remind you that these tests are not generally for beginners to genetic genealogy testing. The price of $25 per marker "will be in effect until (including) Father's Day (June 15th 2014)."  Thomas & and Astrid Krahn, formerly yDNA experts at FTDNA, are the principals in YSEQ. This price is cheaper per SNP than the sale price of FTDNA. Free shipping is offered on orders of 4 SNPs or more. Buyers will have to consider whether the cost and time of securing new saliva samples for YSEG will offset the difference in the SNP prices. For unusual SNPs one, both or neither lab may currently offer the desired test. There is no simple single solution that will be the best choice for everyone. 


 
So we have two sales for atDNA, two for yDNA SNPs and one for yDNA STRs. Have fun and enjoy the sales. 

We Also Collect and Preserve

Yesterday I asked readers if you were a genetic fisher or genetic genealogist. Right after I made that post it occurred to me that there is another important activity for DNA testers. We also collect and preserve or at least we should. 

Oral History

In her awesome keynote at RootsTech in February, The Legal Genealogist Judy Russell reminded us how quickly important pieces of our family histories can vanish. She quoted NARA archivist, Aaron Holt.

“It only takes three generations to lose a piece of oral family history. It must be purposely and accurately repeated over and over again through the generations to be preserved for [future genealogists.]”

She then forcefully drove the point home:

Think about that.Without a real effort to pass down our family stories purposely and accurately, the richness and depth they add to our family history can be lost in just three generations.From grandparent to child to grandchild. That’s just three generations. Things that were absolutely critical in the lives of our own great grandparents — even our own grandparents — could be utterly unknown to us today. 

DNA Test Records

Thomas Jones, also at this year's RootsTech, reminded us that collecting as much DNA from family members -- particularly the older generation -- is as important to preserving our family histories purposefully and accurately as is collecting the oral histories only they can share. Dr Jones suggested that our DNA collection should be limited only by our budgets and that reports of these tests should be preserved for future historians of our families.


Testing Alone Is NOT Enough

Almost all of the DNA testing by our family members has been done in the last decade. Most of it in the last half decade. However, there are already examples in most extended families of close relatives who have tested but are no longer alive. Who has access to the reports of these tests? How long will it be before no one really can interpret those test reports within the context of histories of the families to whom they belong? We may soon be losing access to DNA test reports from family members almost as quickly as we seem to loose access to other family stories.

There are at least two separate and distinct issues at play here. One is physical/digital access the test reports and the other is legal access. Both require purposeful advanced planning.

Do you record the URL, record ID/kit number and password for all of your DNA test reports with your will, trust or other instructions to the administrator of your estate? Why not? Have you spelled out who should have access to these reports? Have you helped family members to document their wishes on these matters?

To my knowledge FTDNA is the only testing company that has acknowledged this ticking time bomb. Filling out this form is not strenuous and does not take a lot of time. So Dr D prescribes you take Nike's advice and Just do it! 

Perhaps The Legal Genealogist can spell this out clearer than I just did. Help Judy!

Are You a Genetic Fisher or a Genetic Genealogist?

There are at least two basic strategies available to those interested in DNA testing to extend their family histories. One is passive and the other is proactive. There is no reason why it has to be either/or.

Genetic Fishers

Most of us probably started as "genetic fishers." We took a DNA test and used our results as bait to "hook" some unknown relatives. As you have probably realized by now, the actual "numbers" on the test reports we get back on our DNA tests are useless for genealogical purposes until they are compared with others and matches are discovered. This is a legitimate strategy. 

To maximize results one needs to fish in the most and the largest ponds their budgets will allow. In the US this would mean doing atDNA tests at 23andMe, Ancestry and FTDNA. Then results should be ported to third part sites like GEDmatch.com to allow cross database comparisons. It would also include taking an mtFull Sequence test and a yDNA STR test of at least 37 markers at FTDNA,    

GENO 2.0 is not a good test for family history fishers because it only begins to comes into focus in earnest earlier than the genealogical time period that most of us can document our histories. Its real purpose is to explore deep ancestry and to preserve the unique genotypes of isolated and aboriginal peoples before they are amalgamated into the mainstream. 

Genetic Genealogists

"Genetic genealogists" are required to use more forethought and often to get involved in active recruiting. It requires the identification of a specific research question which guides the choice of the appropriate test(s) and the person(s) to be tested. My first DNA test in 2004 was to test the hypothesis that another male Dowell, with whom I had been exchanging genealogical information for about 15 years, was closely related and probably shared a common male ancestor during the 17th century. The test quickly disproved that hypothesis. Subsequent testing has established that our closest male ancestor lived more than 3,000 years ago before either of our ancestral lines even dreamed about a taking a surname such as Dowell.

To test other hypotheses it has been necessary to recruit a number of male and female cousins including one that was a 3rd cousin -- once removed and several who were about 6th cousins. Identifying the right cousin(s) and convincing them to test is often more than half the battle. The process of selecting the right test and the right test taker requires an understanding of the 4 inheritance patterns of the 4 types of DNA that I discussed in yesterday's post "Which Ancestors Are Talking?"

Which Are You?  

I suspect that most of us are genetic fishers much of the time. However, I hope many of you will also become accomplished genetic genealogists as well.

Has DNA Day Lost It's Mojo?

Has DNA DAY lost it's "mojo"? Did it ever have mojo? Did you know that DNA Day is coming on Friday April 25? Did you know that April is or was "Human Genome Month?

This was established by Joint Resolutions of the US Senate and House of Representatives in 2003.

The torch for the US government seems to have been taken up by the National Human Genome Research Institute.

The European Society of Human Genetics has gotten into the act for the last 7 years: 

The structure of the DNA double helix was unraveled over sixty years ago! DNA Day, April 25, is now commemorated internationally as a celebration of Genetics and its promises.

Have I just missed the efforts under way by the genetic genealogy community to take advantage of this educational and promotional opportunity? By coincidence, I will be giving a talk on Friday morning at 9:00 AM to the History and Genealogy Group at the Fifty-Forward Turner Center at 8100 Hwy 100 in Bellevue (TN). The activity is free and open to the public. Have you planned anything in your community?

I still would not be surprised to see a flash sale from one or more of the genetic genealogy testing labs. I also would not be surprised to see a new feature roll out from one of them as well.  Have you heard anything yet? Stay tuned.

Which Ancestors Are Talking?

We all understand that our DNA speaks to us to inform us about the past, the present and the future. As genealogists we are primarily interested in discovering what it has to tell us about our past. To be able to integrate this information with other sources of information, we need to be able to answer two basic questions. What are our ancestors saying and which ancestors are talking?

We will be expanding our knowledge of what our ancestors are saying for the rest of our lives as more and more of the human genome is understood. We can now have a more complete knowledge of which of our ancestors are talking even if we cannot yet fully understand what they are saying. A basic understanding of who is talking to us is one of the first essential building blocks toward becoming accomplished genetic genealogists. 

When we have a genealogical question, we need to be able to understand which parts of our DNA might have information to answer it. Which parts of our DNA give voice to which parts of our ancestors? It comes down to understanding the four unique inheritance patterns of four distinct areas of our DNA. 

By now most of you know that women carry three of these: mitochondrial (mtDNA), autosomal (atDNA) and X chromosome (xDNA). Men carry a fourth kind which I sometimes call "guY DNA" because it is what makes them a guy. If you understand how each of these components of your genome were passed down to you, you have the beginning of an understanding of which ancestors might have something to tell you about your family history. Whole books can and have been written on this subject so what follows below is only a summary of the Reader's Digest condensed version. 

mtDNA

Our mitochondria are not even in the nucleus of our cells. They float around in the fluid that surrounds the nucleus. Some cells contain thousands of copies of our mtDNA information. It has ONLY 16,569 locations. A complete mtDNA test can read the code at each of those positions. 

We all inherit our mtDNA from our mothers and only from our mothers. Men do not pass it on to their children. It is one of the two kinds of "celibate DNA." Celibate DNA is not mixed between with the DNA of the other parent but is passed down essentially intact generation after generation. Therefore it is good for tracing deep ancestry but only along one single line of our pedigree chart. In this case mtDNA would allow us to read information about our mother's > mother's > mother's line back to mtEve. Since it is the smallest "book" in our DNA library it is not a good tool for distinguishing subtle differences between siblings and between descendants of siblings who share a common female ancestor. This is your matriarchy talking without any direct influence from your male ancestors. 

Chromosomes

The rest of our DNA is contained in 23 pairs of chromosomes. 

22 pairs of these chromosomes, the autosomes, share a common inheritance pattern. The two sex chromosomes each share unique patterns. 

yDNA

As you you can see above, the y-chromosome is one of the smallest of the chromosomes. However, with about 58 million base pairs it is humongous compared with our mitochondria. We are still learning how to read the codes stored at most of these locations. yDNA is the other kind of celibate DNA. It generally is passed intact from father to sons generation after generation. It can retain its information for eons because it is not diluted by the DNA contributions of the mothers. However, since male siblings each inherit essentially the same yDNA from their fathers, it generally is not too useful in differentiating between the descendants of brothers. When you listen to your yDNA, it is your patriarchs talking without direct input from your maternal ancestors. 

atDNA

By far the majority of your DNA is contained in your 22 pairs of autosomes. These are one of your two types of promiscuous DNA. In this case their promiscuity is both their endearing quality and the source of frustration as we try to read the information they carry. atDNA speaks to us to help sort out relationships that occurred in the last few generations. Occasionally we get a shout out from an ancestor much further back. However, the apparently random way that our parents pass down the DNA they inherited from our grandparents simultaneously tantalizes and confuses. When you listen to your atDNA, you are most often hearing your ancestors of the last four or five generations ALONG ANY of the lines of your pedigree chart.

xDNA

The other type of promiscuous DNA is xDNA. You inherit it in a manner similar to the way your receive atDNA with one very important twist. Males do not pass along xDNA to male offspring. They pass along yDNA instead. Did I say males do not pass along xDNA to male offspring? Yes I am being redundant. Repetition is the key to learning. Many advanced genetic genealogists have trouble recalling the inheritance pattern for xDNA. If you remember the admonition in this paragraph, you will begin to be able to sort out relationships shared through xDNA. When you listen to your xDNA you will not hear any information from any ancestor who is earlier than a male to male blockage. For example you will not hear any information from your paternal grandfather's quadrant of the pedigree chart because he did not pass any xDNA to your father. This same principle must be applied again and again in other sections of your pedigree chart. 

Which ancestor(s) would you like to talk to today?

Take a look at your pedigree chart. Which ancestor(s) might be able to help you answer a relationship question if they shared the information in their DNA? How did you or a close relative inherit that ancestral DNA? Happy testing and analysis!

Who is our DNA President?

DNA Day is coming next week. Some of the testing companies may offer sales. Who do you consider to be our DNA President(s)?

Many of us know about the role that President Bill Clinton played in encouraging the Human Genome Project. He maneuvered the pubic and private competitors into working toward the same goal and thus expedited the pace of discovery. He even prematurely declared success in this landmark venture so that he could claim it happened on his watch. For this all of us genetic genealogists owe him a debt of gratitude.

On the other side of the political aisle, most of us don't think of George W. Bush as a DNA friendly President. At least I don't usually even though I am related to him at about the 9th cousin level through at least three of his 4 grandparents. Most of us can remember his ban in 2001 on federal funding for the use of new lines of embryonic stem cells in medical research. However, by the last year of his presidency he signed a couple of significant pieces of helpful legislation.

On the eve of President Bush's last DNA Day in office 2008, he signed into law the Newborn Screening Saves Lives Act of 2007:  

The purpose of the `Newborn Screening Saves Lives Act of 2007' is to facilitate the creation of Federal guidelines on newborn screening, to assist State newborn screening programs in meeting Federal guidelines, to improve education, outreach, and coordinated follow-up care, and to improve the laboratory quality and surveillance for newborn screening.

Newborn screening is a public health activity, which provides early identification and follow-up for treatment of infants affected by certain genetic, metabolic, hormonal and/or functional conditions. Since the early 1960s, when Robert Guthrie devised a screening test for phenylketonuria (PKU) using a newborn blood spot dried onto a filter paper card, more than 150 million infants have been screened for a number of genetic and congenital disorders. Screening detects disorders in newborns that, if left untreated, can cause disability, intellectual disabilities, serious illness and even death. Except for hearing, screening tests are done using a few drops of blood from the newborn's heel, usually taken in the hospital 24 to 48 hours after birth. With the advent of the tandem mass spectrometer, it is now possible to detect more than 40 conditions and for some conditions such as PKU, tandem mass spectrometry has been shown to reduce the false positive rate for this disorder.

Parents are often unaware that the number and quality of newborn screens varies from State to State and while newborns are regularly screened and treated for debilitating conditions in some States, in others, screening may not be required and conditions may go undiagnosed and untreated. In 2004, the American College of Medical Genetics completed a report commissioned by the United States Department of Health and Human Services which recommended that, at a minimum, every baby born in the U.S. be screened for a core set of 29 treatable disorders regardless of the State in which he or she is born. At present, only 15 States and the District of Columbia require infants to be screened for all 29 of the recommended disorders. In fact, States currently mandate screening newborns for as few as 9 conditions while others mandate more than 40 conditions. An estimated 1,000 of the 5,000 babies born every year in the United States with one of the 29 core conditions potentially go unscreened through newborn screening. If diagnosed early these conditions can be successfully managed.

The `Newborn Screening Saves Lives Act of 2007' will assist States in improving and expanding their newborn screening programs as well as provide for Federal guidelines on the conditions for which newborns in all States should be screened. The public health crisis that ensued after hurricanes such as Katrina and Rita demonstrated, among other things, that contingency planning for newborn screening is essential. Under this legislation the Secretary is required to develop a national contingency plan for newborn screening for use by States in the event of a public health emergency.

The bill authorized $58,500,000 the first year to carry this activity.

The next month President Bush signed the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (GINA) . As most of you know, GINA bans discrimination based on genetic information in making employment and health insurance decisions. It does not protect decisions about life and long term care insurance.

President Bush's actions in 2001 and 2008 appear to be polar opposites. Does anyone have insight into his apparent transformation?

The Newborn Screening legislation takes DNA testing to the delivery room. Soon I will post about taking it even earlier. It's a great story -- at least I think it is. Stay tuned!

Power in Projects

I finally got my own BIG Y test results back Monday night. Of the kits I personally am monitoring, 2 kits remain unreported. Those were contributed by my late father-in-law and my distant cousin George. Both of their results pages still project that their results will be available by March 28th. Cousin George has been asked to provide an additional backup sample "just in case" it is needed. I haven't heard anything about my father-in-law's test. That's a little nerve wracking since he is no longer available to provide another sample.

Trying to find meaning in BIG Y results can be overwhelming -- at least at first. I am fortunate enough to belong to a haplogroup R-L21 that has a very active project that is led by some extremely talented leaders who are incredibly generous in sharing their time and expertise. 

I downloaded my raw data Tuesday without a hitch but was a little unsure about the protocol for uploading it to my haplogroup project. BIG Y results are a lot like other genetic genealogy reports. Individual reports by themselves are essentially meaningless. However, they can take on powerful meaning when they are compared with the results of others.

After some investigation I discovered the appropriate way to upload my results to my project. For our R-L21 project which contains several hundred members, the process has been automated by talented volunteer members. This morning, within a couple of hours of uploading the zip file of my raw data, I got an email from James Kane, one of the volunteers:

Hi Dave,

It looks like you are in the S1026 group in case you hadn't already known. You will be in the Big Y Matrix later this morning.

James

James was true to his word. Later this morning I started showing up in various project reports along side six other men who share this SNP. This group will grow as more test takers report their results.

S1026 is one of the new SNPs reported in the last few months by James Wilson of ScotlandsDNA. Context in genetic genealogy is everything. Where is SNP S1026 located? So far I know that it is downstream, more recent, from SNP DF13 which was the most recent SNP for my parental line than I knew about yesterday. All of you reading this, except for 1 or 2, are scratching your heads and wondering what I'm talking about. How about a picture? Thanks to the tireless work of volunteer Mike Walsh I can show you one:

That is S1026 in the small red box at the bottom of the chart. Some of you may remember that a few days ago I discussed the movement of the Virginia Dowells down the SNP trail in the red box on the right side of this chart. On the vertical blue line that appears to bisect this chart, the Virginia Dowells branched off to the right and the Maryland Dowells continued to the bottom of the chart. So far we have been able to track my Maryland ancestors a step closer to the present to SNP S1026. 

Without the dedicated work and amazing expertise of those who lead our projects we would not be able to unravel the messages of our DNA. The haplogroup projects are a very powerful force in helping us learn. 

BIG Y Results Revisited

As I still await my own BIG Y results I continue to explore the results of others to familiarize myself with the test reports. In this post I am examining the report of a man with whom I have long had close STRs matches. His surname is different than mine but the STRs results suggest we share a common direct paternal ancestor in genealogical time.

In earlier testing over the years we had experienced 35/37 matches and 64/67 matches. By 111 STR markers we have 9 mismatches our unadjusted probabilities of sharing a common match according to FTDNA's TiP:

"In comparing Y-DNA 111 marker results, the probability that he and David Ray Dowell shared a common ancestor within the last..."

COMPARISON CHART

Generations	Percentage
4	1.74%
8	27.31%
12	67.71%
16	90.54%
20	97.93%
24	99.63%

Since both of us have pretty good paper trails that seem to rule out a common male ancestor within the last 8 generations, we can refine this to run the probabilities again taking this into account:

COMPARISON CHART

Generations	Percentage
8	11.54%
12	60.70%
16	88.49%
20	97.48%
24	99.55%

We have long ago reconciled ourselves to accept that we do not have a common ancestor on this side of the Atlantic although both of us have deep colonial roots. On the other hand it appears likely that we do share a common paternal ancestor within several generations before our separate departures to the colonies.


As I reported in my first attempt to find genealogical relevance in BIG Y results, I had previously done a single SNP test for DF13 but had not been able to find any more recent SNPs. My STR match had not confirmed that his DNA had progressed down the trail from L21 to DF13. We both strongly suspected that it had but it would be nice to verify this.

Verifying that he was also DF13 turned out to be a little more difficult than I thought. The indexes to BIG Y results did not include DF13 although that SNP has long been in use for the major subdivision of the large R-L21 project and FTDNA has long (at least in genetic genealogy terms) offered a single SNP test for it.

So I turned to a list on Facebook and posted a query asking if there was another name for DF13. Bob Dorr quickly came to my assistance by reposting:

"If you have tested with FTDNA as DF13+, and you search your FTDNA Big YI report for “Known SNPs” for DF13, you will not find it. You have to search for its CTS synonym CTS241 which you will find." from https://groups.yahoo.com/.../conversations/topics/20249  

It then occurred to me that I could have found this information in the ISOGG YSNP Tree. CTS241/DF13/S521 are all listed as synonymous there. So many new SNPs have been loaded recently that you may have to give the page a moment to fully load. Then you can use the "Find" feature of your browser to search for a particular SNP.

Mike Wadna soon chimed in on Facebook with this piece of intelligence:

In some cases, the test read quality was low, so it will be marked as REJECTED even though it is derived/positive. The only way I know to check that is look in your raw results. DF13/CTS241's position # is 2836431 and this is the allele change, A to C.

   
So with this information in hand I was able to decoded my match's BIG Y results and determine that he too was positive for DF13/CTS241/S521. I emailed him and said, "So far that was a very expensive individual SNP test you took. ;-)" $495 for BIG Y is considerably more than an individual SNP test for $39.  However, the fun of decoding was only beginning. 

I have subsequently been able to locate BIG Y results for 12 SNPs that have been placed just below DF13 by the R L21 project team. They were all negative for my match who is serving as my temporary surogate. I'm still investigating 2 that had "?" calls and a few more that I have yet to locate in BIG Y. At this point BIG Y is becoming cost effective. Thirteen SNPs tested at $39 each would run $507. Every thing else is gravy. The fun of analyzing BIG Y results is just beginning.  

Even one more step from DF13 downstream to be closer to the present would be very exciting – at least for a couple of hours. Then we would start clamoring for more downstream SNPS!

Hope the thousands of you who ordered BIG Y are enjoying your results.

BIG Y: My First Genealogically Relevant Find.

The first thing I learned from the BIG Y test is that the Virginia Group 1 Dowells in our surname DNA project can finally be moved out of the logjam at SNP M222. What? You didn't know that they were jammed up there? Read on.

One of the first things we learned in 2004 in our surname project was that my Maryland Dowells were not recently related to the Virginia Group 1 Dowells. Previously we had assumed that we were closely related. We had our own variation of the multiple brothers myth. I'm sure you have heard a similar tale about one or more of the lines you have researched. 

It goes something like this. Two (or four) brothers came across the Atlantic. When they disembarked one went north and one went west. Which ever branch you descend from never heard from the other branch again. Of course there is enough truth in some such stories that they need to be investigated. However, most of them have remained impossible to verify. One of the Dowell versions I heard decades ago was that four brothers came over from Wales. I still don't know exactly where my Dowells came from before they revealed themselves in Maryland.

Prior to 2004 the working hypothesis among Dowell surname researchers was a variation of the migration myth that claimed upon arrival in Hampton Roads one Dowell turned right and sailed up the Chesapeake Bay and the other continued up the James River. Waterways were the interstate highways of the time so this story had a ring of truth. Based on this story many of us assumed that if either group would be able to extend its paper trail just one or two generations further back, we would find our common male Dowell ancestor.

Then came yDNA testing. It soon became apparent that the two groups of Dowells shared the surname only by historical coincidence. Biologically, we were no more related that we would be if we each had different surnames. Our closest shared male ancestor lived at least three thousand years ago -- long before surnames were adopted. These two groups remain the two biggest clusters in our project. 

SNPs (pronounced "snips") are permanent changes in a person's DNA that are passed down to all descendants. yDNA SNPs are permanent changes that are passed down by fathers to all their sons. As we have learned more about yDNA SNPs, we been able to sketch in more and more of our ancient ancestral lines. The BIG Y test has offered many of us an unprecedented chance to explore our SNP history in much more detail than had previously been available. This is not a test for novices. Even most of us who have considerable experience with genetic genealogy are overwhelmed by the results that are coming back.

Both groups of Dowells descend from a large haplogroup (ancient clan). Membership in this clan is distinguished by a mutation located at position called R-L21. The heat map below is from my results from the Geno 2.0 test at National Geographic which focuses on deep ancestry. The more intense the yellow and finally the red become, the larger percentage of the population carry this SNP. You will note that men who carry it are very prevalent along the Atlantic Coast of Europe and have particularly heavy concentrations in the British Isles.

The chart below shows what we thought we knew about where the two groups of Dowells had traveled down the SNP highway of history before BIG Y. The top of the chart has been truncated for simplicity. It begins as our ancestors migrated out of Central and Western Asia. You will note that L21 is represented by a green box in the upper middle of the chart below. We are very fortunate that a group of dedicated and knowledgeable citizen scientists also belong to the group and have done an immense amount of work to sort all this out. You may click on the chart to open a larger version in your browser. 
   

Before BIG Y we knew that the SNP flow of the Maryland Dowells had continued down to DF13 -- the green box just below L21 above. Then we could find no more recent SNPs. On the other hand the Virginia Group 1 Dowells could be traced through more recent SNP mutations down the left side of the chart to SNP M222. 

This chart was recently expanded to better represent newly discovered SNPs but still does not incorporate the bounty of BIG Y. Note that M222 is now shown among the blue boxes in the center right of the chart below:

The lower right part of this chart (area enclosed by the red rectangle) is blown up below for easier viewing:

Can you trace the path of SNPs from M222 in the fifth row of the family tree down to DF97 in the lower right corner of this last chart? It is sort of a connect-the-dots exercise for genetic genealogists. The Virginia Group 1 Dowells followed that genetic trail. That is what I have learned so far from BIG Y. 

How do I know that? The one Virginia Dowell who participated in BIG Y tested positive for SNPs DF85 and DF97. That means he also would be positive for the intervening SNPs along the connecting line from M222 down to DF97.

I hope we will be able to learn more from the massive amount of raw data that came back from this one test, but this is quite an advancement of our knowledge of the migration of the paternal ancestors of the Virginia Group 1 Dowells. Now we have to put it all into historical context -- a daunting task.