Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on November 24, 2019

Last time I wrote about my family and the differences in our DNA. My wife and I were tested, and then our four children also joined in, so we all have our results from Ancestry DNA. There were some differences, and I am still trying to find out why some of them happened. I can explain most of the differences because when we passed our DNA down to the children, they each inherited slightly different pieces of our DNA.

It is like shuffling a deck of cards and then picking half of them to go on to the next generation. For each child you would have to re-shuffle the deck, so, even though they get their DNA from each parent, the parts they get are slightly different. The question Im still trying to figure out is how a child could get a higher percentage of one area than the parents have. For example, one of them has 9 percent Germanic Europe, while I only have 5 percent and my wife doesnt have any. Im trying to get an answer for that.

Actually, Ive been tested by four companies, each with slightly different results. These differences can be explained because each company tests areas of the DNA structure that are different from what other companies test, and it can also be explained because each company has different reference populationsthe groups of people they use to determine what makes "Ireland" or "Ghana" or "Native American."

My results, although different, are similar. For example, Ancestry DNA has me at 93 percent British Isles (Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales), while 23&Me has only 68 percent, but with overlapping areas it becomes 95 percent. Family Tree DNA shows 85 percent, and MyHeritage DNA shows 97 percent. Sprinkled in among these figures are various percentages of Germanic Europe, Sweden, Spanish Europe, Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Native American, Southeast Asia, Central Asia and Ashkenazi Jew. These variations come from the areas of DNA tested by the companies, and their reference groups.

One thing about genealogy in general, and DNA testing in particular, that I always mention to my students is to be cautious. If you dont like surprises, stop immediately. There are ALWAYS surprisesfrom unexpected adoptions to parents who arent really biological parents at all, or sometimes an explanation of ethnicity that has been passed on for generations, but is proven incorrect by DNA testing (like the story of the Indian princess). All families have secrets somewhere. Our job as genealogists is to find them and solve the mystery. DNA can really help.

For example, in my own family, my parentage and my grandparents back several generations are definitely what I expected, but somewhere in the past few hundred years there may have been what is sometimes called a "non-paternity event." I dont like that term because, of course, there was paternity it just might not have been the paternity recorded on a birth certificate or in the family Bible. Anyway, my "Y" DNA test (son to father to his father, on back in the direct male line for generations) shows that in the past I might be related to the Cahoon/Calhoun family (and there are several variant spellings, including those from Scotland). Im still trying to figure this out. I claim descent from John Moses, who came to Massachusetts in 1632. Someone out east also claims this, but our DNA is so different that we cant even be related. This means that his family had one of those non-paternity events, or mine did, or both did. Ill write more about what I am doing to solve this problem later.

Jim Moses welcomes comments at jmosesgen@gmail.com.

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Jim Moses: The muddy waters of DNA testing - Sentinel-Standard

Category: Ashkenazi
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