So Much DNA News!

Just when I was thinking that every DNA testing company was stepping up their game, fantastic blogger and programmer Kitty Cooper summed up recent news in this blogpost. http://blog.kittycooper.com/2017/11/so-much-genetic-genealogy-news/

In addition to Kitty, Debbie Cruwys blogs about Living DNA’s new project One Family One World and the start of transfers from other testing companies, announcing DNA matching in Summer 2018.

https://cruwys.blogspot.com/2017/10/living-dna-updates-free-transfers-and.html

Ancestry.com announced 6 million testers, an increase of 1 million in the last 3 months.  23andme.com exceeded 3 million. Other companies have fewer but are announcing changes that will bring more customers to their services.  And Kitty points to news from a number of third-party sites. 

Don’t get overwhelmed…keep reading.  

For people new to DNA testing, read some of the DNA articles in the left menu of our website ferndalegenies.blogspot.com.  Also come to our meeting on November 20 where I will give a mini-intro to DNA and you will hear a bunch of DNA stories from the members.  We will answer your questions there.

For people new to genealogy, I don’t suggest that everyone needs a DNA test.  DNA results go hand-in-hand with traditional DNA research.  Test if you want to for fun but know that a family tree is needed to take advantage of the matching relatives you are provided.

My DNA testing recommendation remains essentially the same.  Start with Ancestry.com unless you have a special case of adoption, unknown parentage, or elderly tester.  Ancestry has by far the most possible matches and there is no way to transfer your raw DNA to Ancestry from another testing service.  You can transfer your raw DNA data from Ancestry.com to MyHeritage, Family Tree DNA and GedMatch.

There will be numerous discounts between now and the end of the year.  Kitty gives a couple and many are coming.  I advise…don’t go for the cheapest test.  Figure out what test and company you want to use and wait for the holiday discount. 

There are so many improvements and new companies that I can’t keep up with it all.  If you try any of the new capabilities, we will all be eager to hear about your experiences on November 20th.

Judith Culver

New Feature "Genetic Communities" from Ancestry DNA

Ancestry has announced a new DNA feature that has the genealogy community humming. All the bloggers are writing about it. It's called Genetic Communities. On your DNA Results home page where the Ethnicity Estimate has always been, you will see the Ethnicity Estimate "thousand of years ago" and under that Genetic Communities "hundreds of years ago". They are starting out assigning people to 300 Genetic Communities based on their DNA and locations in their trees. You can get a list of people who share your DNA and the community.

The pros think this is really cool and I especially like the historical information about each location broken down by time periods.

I suggest a favorite blogger, Blaine Bettinger at http://thegeneticgenealogist.com. It's the third post down. Another favorite of the Genies is Rebecca Estes at https://dna-explained.com/.

We'll being hearing a lot more about this and a similar new feature at Family Tree DNA called "Population Clusters".