The WALK THROUGH THE Y for Group B has Been Approved!
Just got word today that we are approved for the Walk Through the Y (WTY) with Jerry’s sample. The time frame I was given is 3-4 months and this doesn’t include our request to hold up the sample for the New Plate 3.
So let the waiting begin and the hoping that something turns up. NO GUARANTEES as only a little over half have yielded new discoveries in the past—however we are in a new area of the Y so that may help. However one way of looking at it should nothing turn up is that we belong to a smaller and ancient group 😉
This further posting by Thomas on the ISOGG (International Society of Genetic Genealogists) regarding the Genographic 2.0 and Walk Through the Y is of interest:
Geno 2.0 was a team effort. Elliott (FTDNA) was focusing on the mtDNA, Eran (from National Geographic) was focusing on the autosomal SNPs (including Neanderthal, Denisova etc.) and I did the Y-SNPs (Thomas Krahn FTDNA). Elliott was also leading the evaluation process (wetting the chip as Spencer puts it).
The difficulty was not really the high number of SNPs but rather selecting the best ones for genealogical and anthropological purpose. I started off with a contingent of 15000 SNPs that Spencer wanted for the Y chromosome and I tried to make sure that all SNPs from the existing tree and whatever we had available from the WTY and other internal sources was included on the chip. Then I selected the ones from the most reliable external sources and filled them up with data that was extracted from the 1000 genomes public datasets (excluding regions that are considered problematic from a recombination mechanism standpoint).
From the > 25000 Y-SNPs that I had available at that time we filtered out the ones that gave the best scores with a prediction tool provided by Illumina. However we always tried to keep all SNPs from the YCC and Draft Tree in our selection. After several iterations I was able to convince Spencer to increase the Y contigent to 18000 SNPs at the time when we submitted our final choice to Illumina. Many of the today known Z series SNPs have been included in the selection, however I cannot discuss each individual one. There will be other good Z series SNPs that we’ll be missing because not all currently available 1000 genomes data were available at that time. Off course all new findings from the WTY and all verified Z markers that were discovered in the mean time will be considered for the next version of the Geno chip.
The future of Y SNP testing after Geno 2.0 will be essentially:
1.) Test Geno 2.0 or predict your Y haplogroup as good as possible from Y-STR results.
2.) If necessary use individual Y-SNP tests to determine your fine haplogroup (to the last twig of the current knowledge if you want).
3.) If you still can’t solve a Y haplogroup question consider to apply for a WTY run and hopefully find a new SNP that will solve your question and/or contribute to further research and for inclusion in the next Geno Chip.I hope this helps,
Thomas
Wheaton Wood 