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Y-STR Loci Allele
Frequencies |
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Introduction |
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This project is a result of my efforts to understand the use of DNA testing to supplement traditional genealogical methods in general and, in particular, to evaluate its potential to solve an old family mystery whose essence preludes its documentation in the public record. I hope the results presented here will be of similar use to other people who are either contemplating DNA testing or trying to understand their own test results. Though I was able to find the relative frequency of our family haplotype in the European and USA databases, the uniqueness of our results piqued my curiosity to find out exactly wherein our uniqueness lay. Though I found a number of technical papers that addressed the relative frequencies of the alleles of various markers, I was not able to find a simple set of frequency charts. My ultimate goal is to use the data to support my argument that my great-great grandfather did indeed change his name from Dorsey to Kelley as has been a whispered tradition in different branches of our family for several generations. The ethnicity breakdown of data and accompanying maps at these Y-STR Database sites (see below for URL's) are fascinating. Anyone who has not visited them should do so before looking at the spreadsheets and graphs below. For a discussion and representation of the biochemical structure of the individual alleles, I found the STR fact sheets at http://www.cstl.nist.gov/biotech/strbase/ to be very useful. It was last updated 12/01 in comparison to some of the other similar sites I have visited which have not been updated as recently. Procedure Databases at http://www.ystr.org/europe and http://www.ystr.org/usa were queried individually for each possible allele of each of seven Y-STR markers, DYS19, DYS389i, DYS389ii, DYS390, DYS391, DYS392, and DYS393. (Marker 385 coming someday.) In addition, the occurrence of all possible combinations of DYS389i and DYS389ii were tallied for the European database. Results were recorded in an Excel spreadsheet and frequencies for each allele calculated. Frequency graphs were made for each marker and a very messy 3-D bar chart is presented for the combined DYS389i and DYS389ii data. I have not completed collecting data or making graphs for DYS389 for the US database nor DYS 385 for either database. Data is continually added to both databases. I do not anticipate continually updating these charts as my purpose has been to get a feel for the general frequencies of each allele in order to determine how common our family values are. Hopefully others will find the results of interest and useful. Results |
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European Database |
European & US Combined Results |
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Spreadsheets
Frequency Graphs DYS385A & B (work in progress) |
Spreadsheet
Frequency Graphs DYS385A & B DYS389i DYS389ii DYS389i & ii combined
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