Thanks so much for the update on the news, Adrian! Congratulations on your new software; that's terrific for you, and sure to help many others! The news on the DNA front was exciting to read about. We've made such progress in the last few years in the DNA world, but it's obvious that much more is coming down the pike, and I find that exciting! As one of those Williams whose 'matches' on FTDNA include almost exclusively different surnames, I'm interested in seeing refinements to the process. While I fully realize that the DNA 'match' is only the beginning and must be followed up with paperwork and genealogy research, I'm looking forward to a time when there is less ambiguity to it all. Yes, I know, I want it to be easy.....as a Williams it's been a hard row to hoe! lol! Connie Williams ----- Original Message ----- From: wwwuser@yourhostingaccount.com<mailto:wwwuser@yourhostingaccount.com> To: williams-dna@rootsweb.com<mailto:williams-dna@rootsweb.com> Sent: Saturday, November 11, 2006 9:35 PM Subject: [WILLIAMS-DNA] New Topic Posted in the Williams Genealogy Forums! The following new message has been added to the Williams DNA Project board under the new topic of Latest News From Adrian - Lots Going On - Conference Details... -------------------------------- Y'all, Hello there! Remember me?! I know that I have been pretty quiet lately and that it seems like I have disappeared from the project. Well, that isn't the case! I have had a mountain of things going on over the last few weeks that have simply kept me swamped. So, I figured I would take a few minutes to cover all of the things that have been going on. If you have been following the project closely, you'll notice that we are now up to 340 participant....and still growing. And, although I haven't been announcing the changes, we continue to receive a number of results nearly weekly. Thanks to the project admin tool that I have written, I am able to make the changes immediately to the website and you should be able to see those results! For those of you who weren't aware, the 3rd Conference on Genetic Genealogy was last weekend and it was a truly exciting time for me. I was able to meet a couple of our project regulars like Emily Alucino and Mary Souder. At the conference, I gave two different well-received presentations to my fellow administrators and at the same time came home with a number of pieces of information. There are two major chunks of information that I need to pass along. The first is fairly easy.....from now on, whenever the lab cannot clearly determine someone's haplogroup based on their 12-marker test numbers, then FTDNA will automatically perform a SNP test to confirm the haplo. The question was asked about going back and doing SNP tests on prior participants they couldn't initially determine, and replied that they don't know yet. The second chunk of information is much more complex and very difficult to explain, yet it affects probably 60-70% of all participants. The scientific name of the issue is Recombinational Loss of Heterozygosity (recLOH for short). I am working on putting together a layman's terms explanation of this and will post it soon. In a nutshell, all of the multiple markers (those with letters such as 385a&b, 459a&b, 464a,b,c,d,etc) are impacted by this. This markers are called Palindromic markers. What happens is the in the course of our evolution and ancestry, every now and then, the body sends out a protein (enzyme?) that "repairs" these multi-markers. Again, this is a tough thing to explain. If you are interested, take a look at the results page and look at my group (Group 7). If you'll notice, at 385a&b, I have an 11-11 while everyone else in the group has an 11-14. For the last few years, we have thought that this represented a 3-step mismatch between myself and the rest of the group. Well, thanks to the latest scientific information, we now know that this marker set has been "repaired". Our ancestor originally had the 11-14 setup but at some point in my lineage only, the DNA was repaired and the mutations were removed...cleaning up the marker and changing it to an 11-11, but in just one step. So, instead of this being a 3-step mismatch...it is only 1. Now, apply this same concept to the rest of the lettered markers. And, it actually gets even more messy. mismatches due to recLOH on the 459 and CDY markers are now counted together. This completely changes the dynamic of how mismatches are calculated on these markers. What does this mean for you? Well, I have now have to go back and review all of the matching and non-matching information to see if this new information creates more matches. Specifically, we can very possibly expect to see some of the folks in the non-match groups, now actually match because I have to count the mismatches differently now. I will post more clear information about this later....again, it is a difficult item to explain in a posting! Another great thing with the conference was the chance for a group of us to get together to have dinner. Hughes Williams, Robert J. Williams (no match) and grandsons Alex and Robert (I believe?), Robert Williams and son Robert (Group 51), Bill and Stephanie Williams (Group 2) and myself met up at the Cheesecake factory for a very nice evening (I think I got everyone's names right!?!?). And, Robert J. actually flew down from Amarillo just for the meeting! I was truly honored that everyone would make the effort just to get together! Thanks!!! You will notice a new row for each group in the matched groups table called Modal Haplotype. This is basically, the most likely DNA pattern which that group's ancestor most probably had. In other words, this is the ancestral result set. It is determined from the most common numbers for each DYS value. And, keep in mind that it is group specific...so each group will have a different Modal since they each descend from a different ancestor. I will be making some time over the next couple of weeks to get these Haplotypes put in. I think once you see them, it will make more sense. And, there is some big news on my own homefront. One of the biggest reasons I haven't been very active lately is because I have been working hard on some brand new genetic genealogy software. It is literally a project management toolkit for DNA project administrators. We admins do not have any software to help us keep track of the ever growing amount of project related information and so I decided to write one. I unveiled it at the conference and it has been getting rave reviews. I have a self-imposed deadline of the end of the year to have version 1 finished and ready for sale, and in order for me to hit that, I have to keep my head buried in the program code. So far, it hasn't interfered with my Williams admin duties but I am constantly keeping that in mind. Hopefully, once I get the software released, I can get more active in the project again. I actually have even more stuff to talk about, but I will save that for later...this posting has grown much larger than I thought it would!! And, I have gotten the really important items out (I think!). Until later, Adrian ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to WILLIAMS-DNA-request@rootsweb.com<mailto:WILLIAMS-DNA-request@rootsweb.com> with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message