Thanks, Ann, for posting about this paper. I live in Newfoundland but was not born here. My wife and her family have been Newfoundlanders for several generations. The island's historical isolation tends to lead to Matrix Charts such as the one for my wife's Family Finder results show at this URL: http://www.erbland.org/post/MDHMatrix.jpg I've come to learn that it's not uncommon for Newfoundlanders to be connected to a single ancestor by more than one path; often by more than two paths. My wife, a sister and their mother are part of the 534 members in the FTDNA Project "NfldLab-FamilyFinder". There is also a 317 member FTDNA Project, "NfldLab-mtDNA. The results for my wife, sister and their mother are on GEDmatch; F396629, F396628 and F396626 respectively. The study that Ann cited in her post is http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ejhg2015256a.html The article talks about using "Newfoundland and Labrador (NL)" "...for identifying recessive variants for complex diseases...". One such disease is "Bardet-Biedl syndrome" (BBS). BBS has been studied extensively by researchers at Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN). In fact, the above cited paper shares some MUN co-authors with this paper: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15637713 One of those authors, "Jane S Green", does genetic testing for families of Newfoundlanders who have BBS. One thing I don't understand about the 2015 paper is the use of "Newfoundland and Labrador (NL)" as the geographical area of the study. (Caveat: the paper is behind a paywall, so I've only read the abstract.) "Newfoundland and Labrador" is the name of the Canadian province that encompasses both the geographically isolated Island of Newfoundland as well as part of the North America mainland known as Labrador. I would think that the population genetics of Newfoundland differs significantly from Labrador. For example, Labrador's proportion of people with Innu, Inuit, and Mi'kmaq heritage is far higher than on the Island. Even without having read the full paper, I'm not sure that Ann's statement that " Genetic structure is detectable based on religious background..." is a significant finding of the paper. Anyone who lives in Newfoundland understands the significant impact on population genetics of the Catholic/Protestant division without the need for DNA testing. Even the Provincial Archives files BMD records according to religion. In any event, I agree that Newfoundland is an interesting place to do genetic genealogy. - Mardon -----Original Message----- From: genealogy-dna-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:genealogy-dna-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of Ann Turner via Sent: Thursday, December 17, 2015 10:10 AM To: DNA Genealogy Mailing List <GENEALOGY-DNA@rootsweb.com> Subject: [DNA] Genetic structure in Newfoundland and Labrador Genetic structure is detectable based on religious background in this study of Newfoundland and Labrador. That could be a consequence of marrying someone with the same religion, even though the general geographic background might not be that different. http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ejhg2015256a.html <*snip*>