Irish Eyes - Vol 11

Welcome to this addition of Irish Eyes, 20 September 2008, I hope you enjoy reading it.

This email Irish Eyes has been sent to you as you are a member of the R1b1c* DNA cluster called "Irish Type III".
If you do not wish to receive any further bulletins, please email Dennis Wright at info@irishtype3dna.org and I will remove you from the distribution list.

Our website is at www.irishtype3dna.org and continues to attract visitors, now over 6,000.

Breaking 300 members

I am pleased to be able to report that we now have 306 members of the cluster, a far cry from the 15 that I identified back in March 2006 after Ken Nordtvedt had described the distinctive STR Markers that defines our cluster.

Welcome to the new members, many of whom tested at Ancestry.com, that are receiving this flyer for the first time.

Ancestry members

Recently I became aware of the large number of people who have started testing with Ancestry.com. Some are testing 30 markers and others 43.  Both options test DYS463 and DYS464 allowing me to see if they are likely to be members of our cluster.

On checking my matches at Ancestry, I found 30 cluster members that I was not aware of before - they did not have a Ysearch ID or were not members of surname projects hosted by Family Tree DNA, Rootsweb etc.

Getting results from this source is more difficult than from Ysearch, FTDNA, SMGF and Ybase as the results are compared with your markers and if they match, only a 'dot' is inserted for the marker. So having collected the records from the Ancestry site, I then needed to manually add the marker value to each 'dot' before I could enter the record into my database.

I have emailed each match and while some have emailed back, I am still waiting on contact from many. The existence of sites such as ours was a surprise to some.

Ysearch IDs

Have you also thought of setting up a Ysearch ID? www.ysearch.org

Setting up a Ysearch ID allows others to quickly check for matches in the largest database available to everyone. As you have then published your results publicly, I am able to include them in the results page of the 'Irish Type III' website.  I will not post them on the website unless you have a Ysearch record as I will always respect your right to privacy.

We all will, however, get the greatest gains by being prepared to share our information and hence get more and better matches to one another.

Those with 67 markers have the added benefit of being included in the phylogram for our cluster http://www.irishtype3dna.org/Phylogram.htm which allows those members to see their nearest genetic relations.

If you have tested at Ancestry.com and do elect to set up a Ysearch ID, be aware that some markers need conversion as Ysearch reports them differently.

The markers that require conversion are:-
DYS441 -1
DYS442 -5
DYS452 -19
DYS463 -2
Y-GATA-A10 -2
Y-GATA-H4.1 -11

That is you subtract the above from your Ancestry value before entering in Ysearch.  For example, Your DYS463=25 so subtract 2 and enter 23 in Ysearch.

Visit To Clare

I have recently spent 6 weeks overseas which included 4 weeks with two of my sons who live in Cheltenham and London respectively, and a week each in Ireland and Vienna. In September 2003, my eldest son married a girl from Dungarvan Co. Waterford, in Cratloe, Co. Clare and so we have just spent a most pleasant week with her family.

My wife and I did manage a trip to Newmarket-on-Fergus in Co. Clare to see Dromoland Castle, ancestral home of the O'Briens, the chief of whom, Sir Conor Myles O'Brien, 18th Earl of Inchiquin still leaves nearby. While Dromoland is now an International Hotel and Golf Course, there are many wonderful paintings and artifacts of the O'Briens to view.

Remember, our cluster is the genetic fingerprint of the Dalcassians, Dal gCais, descendants of Cormac Cas of which the O'Brien is the principal family.  So to walk the land that our forebears walked a thousand years ago is something else!

The Surnames of Ireland

During my visit to Ireland, I purchased two books by Edward MacLysaght, The Surnames of Ireland which details more than 4,000 Gaelic, Norman and Anglo-Irish surnames.

The second book in the same vein is, Irish Families, Their Names, Arms and Origins  This book has extended writings on many families and coloured plates of 243 Coats of Arms, together with County maps showing were the families ancestral lands lay.

I am happy to check these books for you and I will add to the "Surname Notes" pages as time permits.

S25 tests

For those not aware, several cluster members placed orders to test for an SNP, S25 in September 2007, 12 months ago.

This was done as 33% of Irish Type III tested at SMGF were returning a null result while FTDNA did not appear to have trouble obtaining a value at this marker.  It was thought SMGF were using different primers to locate DYS463 and that their difficulty may have been the result of an SNP, specific to Irish Type III in SMGF's primer area.  As S25 occurs in an area close to DYS463, it was believed that testing S25 would pick up any SNP if it was present.

Still no positive news from EthnoAncestry, and I must say I am rather disappointed. Below is my email to EA and EA's latest response to enquiries:-

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Dear Gianpiero,

I attach Jim Wilson's email of 12 January 2008 and your email on 15 February 2008 where you are saying you were still having problems with S25 testing and (hopefully) an associated SNP, which perhaps is the cause of other testing labs getting null results of the near STR, DYS463.

As it is now 12 months since the order was placed, I would like a full report of current standing of this work, and a proposed timeline for completion.
Is this project continuing or have EA abandoned this testing?

There are several in the Irish Type III project who are asking about the situation.

Kind regards

Dennis Wright
Irish Type III
www.irishtype3dna.org  
R1b1b2a2* ... R1b-S116* 
mt DNA J1c1
Ysearch/mitosearch ID 6PWCD 
ISOGG Regional Coordinator - Australia

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From: EA customer service [mailto:info@ethnoancestry.com] 
Sent: Sunday, September 14, 2008 3:45 AM
Subject: Re: Trying to make contact with EthnoAncestry

Apologies for the delayed response. We are (obviously) have major trouble with this marker. Despite many many repeated efforts in the lab, many different angles/solutions etc it refuses to behave consistently. Dr. Wilson will be in contact shortly with a proposals re customers who are waiting on these results.

With best wishes,

Gianpiero

Naming R1b1c

The clade that our cluster belonged to used to be called R1b1c on the ISOGG R-Tree 2007. http://www.isogg.org/tree/ISOGG_HapgrpR07.html  With the discovery of several new SNPs in 2008, and the finding that our cluster, along with most of R1b1c were S116+/P312+, the clade has been re-named R1b1b2a2 (ISOGG R-Tree 2008) http://www.isogg.org/tree/ISOGG_HapgrpR08.html 

There now appear to be further SNPs that will change our name yet again.  As this is becoming quite unwieldy, discussion seems to agree that we should be called R-S116+ or R1b-S116+ as the last SNP that is derived (changed from ancestral) . Hopefully YCC and/or ISOGG will agree that this the more sensible approach to naming clades.

If any members have comments, suggestions or an article that you would like to write for Irish Eyes please drop me a line .... warning, this flyer may not be too regular !!! 

Slainte, Dennis Wright