A big thank you to Linda Berg for providing notes from our Genies meeting on 11/18.  Following the minute notes we have comments about upcoming gatherings.

At our November 18 meeting, Judith Culver elaborated on her recent announcement that she is interested in sharing some of the tasks related to keeping Ferndale Genies running and relevant.  She expressed her appreciation for the group and all the friendships formed over the years, and her desire to have the group continue.  Several participants also expressed appreciation for her work and the support of the group as we pursue our genealogical research and education. 

Judith then outlined several tasks and asked if anyone would like to take responsibility for doing them on a regular basis: 

       1.   Take notes and write a summary of the monthly meeting discussion to be distributed to all  
        subscribers after the meeting.  Linda and Sylvia agreed to share this task.             

2. 2.  Liaison with the Ferndale Library, including set up of the meeting room and storing furniture afterward and “closing up” (turning off media equipment, lights, reporting number of attendees, etc.)   Cheryl agreed to do this. 

3. 3.  Facilitate meetings.  This would involve initiating the “check in” session at the beginning of the meeting, where each person shares their recent activities or discoveries.  This could be followed by a presentation about something learned, a work session where we assist a member or members with a “brick wall,” or a workshop where we all try a technique or tool. 

4. 4.  Help newcomers subscribe to the blog. 

5. 5.  Learn how to use the projector. 

6. 6.  Reserve use of the library conference room for any separate meetings. 
7. 
   

The tasks not yet assigned are under consideration and will be addressed at future meetings.  Volunteers welcome! 

The Ferndale Library meeting room is reserved for Genies meeting the upcoming year; however, the library is closed the third Monday in both January and February for holidays in those months.  Judith proposed we meet over lunch on those two Mondays.  We are in search of a restaurant that offers a private room for group meetings.  Suggestions needed. 

Several members mentioned  their participation in the Research Like a Pro study group was very helpful in keeping them focused on a research question and avoiding interesting but distracting detours.  Judith introduced us to FamilyLocket.com, the website by Diana Elder and Nicole Dyer, authors of the book, Research Like A Pro.  The website features many other topics, including using DNA results, applying the book Getting Things Done: the art of stress-free productivity to research, and a variety of others.  One can subscribe to a weekly email and listen to their podcasts on these topics. 

Judith then gave a presentation on one of the Family Locket’s recent podcast topics, genetic clustering using the Dana Leeds method.  She showed us how we can organize our DNA matches at Ancestry using the colored dots and shared match feature to create clusters of shared matches, which then can help us identify a shared ancestor.  She then showed us how to use the auto cluster tool, Genetic Affairs, which uses the group information from Ancestry to create a multi-color graphic representation of the clusters.  An explanation of this clustering method and examples of the auto cluster graphic can be found at www.DanaLeeds.com.  Information about Genetic Affairs is available at geneticaffairs.com.   All this and more about clustering are described in the Family Locket RLP podcasts 68, 69, and 70 found here https://familylocket.com/the-research-like-a-pro-genealogy-podcast/.

Upcoming Events

Saturday, Dec 7 is our last RootsMagic Group Meeting at 1:00. Again, RSVP is requested to gauge interest.

Monday, December 16 is the next Genies monthly meeting at the Ferndale Library at 1:00.  This will be a group effort.  

• I'd like a volunteer for co-facilitator for this meeting.  If you have never facilitated a meeting, this is a good time to start among friends.  Email ferndalegenies at gmail.com.
• Volunteer for us to work your brick wall.  We will need a written description before the meeting.  
• Help us identify a restaurant for our January and February meetings. 
• Cheryl, thank you for doing setup and coordination with the library.
• Linda B, thank you for taking minutes again.
• Would anyone like to host holiday refreshments?  Only if you want to.

Monday, January 20, 2020: Our monthly Genies meeting.  The theme might be, with your agreement, Genealogy Goals for 2020.  

• Look for a restaurant location with a private room.  Not expensive.  
• How about a volunteer host to make a reservation, receive RSVP's and greet people at the lunch?

Thank you, all, for bearing with us and volunteering through this transition.  

Some nitty gritty about DNA

For those of you who are interested in the "sciency" side of DNA, Genie Judy Stanley sends this article from Atlantic magazine.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/10/when-you-have-more-dna-one-parent-other/599812/

It’s Possible to Inherit More DNA From One Parent Than the Other

23andMe’s 4-million-person database reveals how many people are living with undetected chromosomal anomalies.

SARAH ZHANG

OCTOBER 10, 2019

Before Natalie Nakles was born, before the egg from which she was conceived was even fully mature, something went slightly awry. The egg that would help form her ended up with two copies of chromosome 16. So today, 24-year-old Nakles does not, as most people do, have one set of chromosomes from each parent. She has two copies of chromosome 16 from her mother and none from her father.

This phenomenon, called uniparental disomy, can happen in any of the 23 pairs of chromosomes. In the scientific literature, it has been linked to spontaneous abortions—and if the fetus survives, skeletal abnormalities, seizures, intellectual disability, and childhood cancers. Nakles has Asperger’s syndrome, but she is otherwise healthy. She has no serious health issues. She only found out about her uniparental disomy after sending in her saliva to 23andMe.

Now a new study of DNA from 4.4 million 23andMe customers—as well as 430,000 people in the U.K. Biobank—suggests many other healthy people, like Nakles, are living with uniparental disomy. The study identified 675 such people and found no significant associations with deleterious traits. Uniparental disomy is both more common and less detrimental than the scientific literature suggested.

  

The people in 23andMe and U.K. Biobank, on the other hand, skew healthy, and it turns out that even healthy people can have what might seem to be big genetic anomalies. “I like to say it’s normal to be abnormal,” Robinson says. She adds that uniparental disomy sometimes comes up in prenatal tests, and the results can make parents anxious because the existing scientific research is essentially a catalog of everything that can go wrong. This study might add some reassurance. “Just because you have that doesn’t automatically mean there’s going to be anything wrong with your child,” she says.

Uniparental disomy is the result of an error during meiosis, the process that forms eggs and sperm. Scientists have proposed different mechanisms, but the most common scenario probably goes like this: The error in meiosis gives the egg or sperm an extra copy of one chromosome, so the resulting embryo ends up with three copies on it. Sometimes, these embryos are spontaneously aborted, but other times, they are able to go through “trisomy rescue,” in which some cells lose that extra third chromosome and eventually outcompete the non-normal cells. The resulting child ends up with the right number of chromosomes, but not necessarily one from each parent.

This is all much more complicated than the standard story of sperm meets egg, yet the result is still a healthy child. “It goes against so many of the rules of biology you’ve memorized in school,” says Priyanka Nakka, a postdoctoral fellow at Boston Children’s Hospital and former 23andMe intern who co-wrote the study. Scientists have theorized and later discovered other ways that conception can go very much awry yet still result in healthy children, such as sesquizygotic twins.

When uniparental disomy does lead to health problems, it is for one of two reasons. First, a child might inherit two copies of a rare, recessive mutation from one parent. Second, some genes are normally turned off or on depending on which parent they’re inherited from in a phenomenon called “genomic imprinting.” That means inheriting two copies from the same parent can cause various health issues. For example, two maternal copies of chromosome 15 leads to Prader-Willi syndrome; two paternal copies leads to Angelman syndrome. They are distinct genetic disorders with very distinct symptoms.

Genomic imprinting does not appear to be spread evenly across all chromosomes though, and uniparental disomy is more serious when on some chromosomes than others. Nakka and her co-authors found that most of the existing papers on uniparental disomy focused on disorders related to chromosomes 6, 7, 11, 14, and 15. But uniparental disomy among relatively healthy people in 23andMe and U.K. Biobank tended to be more common on chromosomes 1, 4, 16, 21, 22, and X.

Read: A man says his DNA proves he’s black, and he’s suing

As at-home DNA tests have become more common, customers have been discovering uniparental disomies on their own. One prominent genetic genealogist, CeCe Moore, told me she had seen about a dozen cases from people who had approached her about their unusual DNA test results. 23andMe doesn’t flag uniparental disomy to customers—and the company says it doesn’t plan to—but it’s possible to deduce from closely scrutinizing the results.

Nakles figured it out after she and her mom both took 23andMe tests, and she noticed they shared more of chromosome 16 than usual. She got her dad to take a test, too, and it confirmed they shared no segments of chromosome 16 at all. Nakles is a medical student, and she quickly pieced together how she came to be in cellular detail. When we talked, she traced for me the initial error in meiosis and the trisomy rescue that “fixed” it. She marveled at how easily she could have not been born at all.

Meeting Next Monday 11/18/19

This not the blog post I started out to write but here goes.  After almost five years of working for the Ferndale Genies group and 139 blogposts, I am running out of steam.  I still love genealogy and my family history but it is time for me to ease out of the leadership. 

If you want to be a part of re-imagining this group, come to our meeting on Monday or send an email to Ferndalegenies at gmail.com.  Now on to the news.

Upcoming meetings:

·         Monday, Nov 18:  Next Genies Meeting:  1:00 at the Ferndale Library

·         Saturday, Dec 7:  LAST RootsMagic Meeting:  Saturday 12/7 is the last meeting of this group.  1:00 at the Ferndale Library.  I’m asking for an RSVP and will cancel it if there is not enough interest.

·         Monday , Dec 16:  Genies Meeting

Search 1.4 billion names FREE at American Ancestors through November 19.  List of collections here: https://mailchi.mp/abundantgenealogy/american-ancestors-free-access-nov-2019?e=cb7c45b1c4   American Ancestors is the data base of the New England Historic Genealogical Society.

National Archives (NARA) Virtual Conference: Free conference is offered every year in October. The good news is that the sessions are available on YouTube back to 2013.  This link will send you to the recordings for all the years:  https://www.archives.gov/calendar/genealogy-fair

Lots of DNA news this month.  All Genealogy DNA Services started holiday sales. 

Many current sale prices end Wednesday, November 27.  Thomas MacEntee says there may be new pricing for Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday but they are currently as low as I have seen them.  You can always check for current prices at Thomas’ site https://dnabargains.com/.  Use the DNA Shop tab.

The bloggers are writing about the all DNA sites adding to and improving their health offerings.  It’s where the money is.  It looks like they are all charging fees in addition to your DNA testing and other subscriptions.  Each site has different offerings and different pricing models.  I will not be looking into the details for you.  You need to pay attention to the Terms and Conditions.

Family Tree DNA (FTDNA) has dropped their regular prices significantly in addition to sale prices.  They are the only company that offers an autosomal test like Ancestry called Family Finder plus Y chromosome testing for your paternal line and mitochondrial for your maternal line.  You need to know why you are ordering these tests.  It is the perfect place to test older relatives because they use a swab (not spitting) and they save the samples for 25 years and can run additional tests.  Even tests that haven’t been invented yet. 

The Family Finder test is comparatively cheap and that preserves the sample.  The other tests are expensive and not taken lightly.  They may answer a special question you have or reveal something you did not know.  We can talk about this at the meeting.

Roberta Estes posted about Y DNA and sale prices blog here.  She starts her article with:

“I must admit – this past January when FamilyTreeDNA announced the Big Y-700, an upgrade from the Big Y-500 product, I was skeptical. I wondered how much benefit testers would really see – but I was game to purchase a couple upgrades – and I did. Then, when the results came back, I purchased more!”  Remember this is the big bucks but it contributes to the science.

Subscription Renewals:

We often talk about Ancestry renewals.  Ferndale Genie Sylvia says: Let folks with AARP memberships know that there is a 30% discount on Ancestry’s World Explorer subscription even if you are not a new Ancestry member. AARP sends you over to Ancestry’s membership department to renew via phone. I just tried today. My Ancestry membership renewal date is Nov 2^nd and the helpful young lady told me if I wait till the end of my membership period, I won’t lose any days from my current one. Otherwise, they’d have to put me in with the new discount starting today and I’d lose the remaining 2-3 weeks. So I will call again on Nov 1^st. Nice deal!

My experience this month with renewals:  One subscription renewed automatically.  In this case it was ok but you need to keep a record of automatic renewals.  Another offered a 30% discount right off the bat.  The third offered no discount for renewal so I waited.  Six weeks later came an offer with a 50% discount.  Bottom line:  Ask or wait. 

Happy Hunting!