The Challenges of Jewish DNA testing
By Kitty Munson Cooper
Blogging at blog.kittycooper.com
23 pairs of chromosomes
Three types of personal DNA tests
Y test for father's father's line
mtDNA for mother's mother's line
Autosomal DNA test for all your ancestors
Where to Test if you are Jewish?
- Family Tree DNA * is the only place for Y testing, has projects, but the smallest database, however many jewish testers, cheek swab
- 23andme gives health results and top level haplogroups
- MyHeritage * has more European testers and connects to trees
- Ancestry.com is least likely to have matches for recent immigrants but has the largest database and best tree matching for now
* takes transfers
SNP - Single Nucleotide Polymorphism
a DNA mutation where a single letter chang3s
STRs are short tandem repeats
An extra copy is made of a sequence of DNA
An extra copy is made of a sequence of DNA
An extra copy is made of a sequence of DNA
An extra copy is made of a sequence of DNA
An extra copy is made of a sequence of DNA
2 Types of Y DNA Tests
Deep ancestry - haplogroup
More recent ancestry - surname studies
Y Haplogroups from SNPs
Jewish Y Haplogroups: J1c3, J2a Cohanim
R1a1 most Levites
E1a1 is frequent
Others: various J subgroups, T1, and E1b
Sample Y DNA STR results for 37 markers
A project at Family Tree DNA for Jewish Y markers
Mitochondria under a microscope
Near Eastern origin mtDNA Haplogroups:
K1a9 and N1b2
others are H variations, possibly European
Your autosomal DNA results are about 700,00 lines of data in a spreadsheet
Inheritance from 8 g-grandparents,
courtesy of Angie Bush
Aunt Shaindel is found!
Lara is collecting Ashkenazi data and her preliminary report is here: https://larasgenealogy.blogspot.com/2018/05/ashkenazic-shared-dna-survey-data-by.html
Close relationships are within the normal range but at the high end, the average is about 100-200 cM larger than the norm
Above, results in my family, see also this paper
academia.edu/7236789/Why_Autosomal_DNA_Test_Results_Are_Significantly_Different_for_Ashkenazi_Jews
Match to a maternal side Ashkenazi 3rd cousin
Comparison to a paternal side Norwegian 3rd cousin
Kitty's Guidelines for Jewish DNA Matches worth following up on
- At least one segment > 20 cM
- Another segment > 10 cM
- Several more good sized segments
Enter the cMs and get probable relationships https://dnapainter.com/tools/sharedcmv4
Israel Pickholtz documents his extensive family DNA project
He blogs at allmyforeparents.blogspot.com/
Getting New Cousins to Respond to You
- Have a family tree online
- Upload friendly picture of yourself
- Include details of who matches whom (they may have multiple kits)
- Offer them information when you write to them
Do not be disheartened by lack of responses, some rarely log in
blog.KittyCooper.com