Month: August 2015

With genetic genealogy the name of the game is collaboration, whether it is collaboration with other people or collaboration among the trees and records of our genealogical and genetic matches. Only when we collaborate can we generate the clues and information necessary to break through walls and recover the names of those missing ancestors.

We have multiple tools for collaboration of genetic matches. At GEDmatch and DNAGedcom, for example, we have many third-party tools that assist our efforts. The companies also offer tools that allow us to sift through our matches to find the clues we need. Family Tree DNA, for example, has an In Common With (“ICW”) tool and a Matrix tool that allow users to see what matches they share in common with another person. ... Click to read more!

Today, I saw an interesting table posted to Facebook, summarizing a genealogist’s family tree. It listed a handful of generations along with the number of possible ancestors in each generation, and the individual’s known ancestors for that generation.

Out of curiosity, I generated a similar table with my own data:

There are many interesting data points in the table. For instance, between the 7th and 8th generations, I drop from knowing 71% of all of my ancestors to knowing just 51% of my ancestors. At 10 generations, with 2046 total ancestors in all generations, I only know a quarter of them. And while I feel very confident for the first 6 or 7 generations; after that I’m much less confident with my family tree. ... Click to read more!

TribeCode (www.TribeCode.com) is a relatively new direct-to-consumer genetic genealogy testing company, officially launching in the fall of 2014. The company is owned by Centrillion Biosciences, headquartered in Palo Alto, California. The TribeCode test, currently offered for $99, offers Y-DNA, mtDNA, and atDNA analysis.

The ISOGG wiki page about TribeCode offers some information about the test, gleaned mostly from Facebook postings by the company. For example, the test apparently uses an Illumina low-coverage sequencing technology and tests at least 12 million markers throughout the genome. More exact details of the sequencing aren’t yet found on the TribeCode website.

Around Thanksgiving of 2014 I ordered the test on sale from approximately $79, and received my results a couple of months later. ... Click to read more!