Build your Online Family Tree, share it and learn more about your ancestors.
First Steps First
Steps

Subscribe for free !

     | Username :
  Password :  
  Forgot Password
GeneaNet : Community : Genealogy Blog Saturday May 10, 2008   

Genetics

28 April 2008

Scientists find 17 descendants of ‘iceman’ found in glacier

Scientists have found 17 living relatives of a centuries-old “iceman,” whose remains were discovered in a melting glacier in northern British Columbia nine years ago.

The remains of a young aboriginal man were found frozen inside a glacier in the Champagne-Aishihik territory in August 1999. Scientists gave the man the nickname Kwaday Dan Ts’inchi, which means “long-ago person found” in the southern Tutchone language.

DNA testing has now connected the iceman to a number of people living in the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations in the North. The results were unveiled Friday at a science conference in Victoria, where all aspects of the discovery are being discussed.

Scientists believe Kwaday Dan Ts’inchi was a hunter, who lived roughly 300 years ago — but possibly longer. He appeared to be in good health when he, for some reason, died an accidental death on the glacier.

More......

21 April 2008

Google Wants to Index Your DNA, Too

Your DNA falls into the realm of “the world’s information,” and it seems that Google, as part of its corporate mission, is making a play to organize that, too. The Internet giant received heavy press in 2007 when it invested at least $4.4 million in a genetic screening company, 23andMe, that was started by Anne Wojcicki, the wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, and her business partner.

Google’s interest in DNA doesn’t end there. It is also putting money into a second Silicon Valley DNA-screening startup, Navigenics. The company is also backed by star venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers. For a spit of saliva and $2,500, your genetic test results are securely delivered to your computer screen with your genetic likelihood for 18 medical conditions, from Alzheimer’s to rheumatoid arthritis to several types of cancer. Navigenics aims to boost disease prevention by providing customers reports on their DNA that they can share with their doctors. The company addresses privacy concerns by encrypting customer identities, and screens only for conditions it deems to have scientifically sound genetic studies. The company also offers genetic counseling.

Much in the way it invested in 23andMe, Google wants to plant an early stake in a potentially large new market around genetic data. “We are interested in supporting companies and making investments in companies that [bolster] our mission statement, which is organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful,” Google spokesman Andrew Pederson says. Read the full story.

14 March 2008

American Indian DNA Links to Six “Founding Mothers”

Nearly all of today's Native Americans in North, Central and South America can trace part of their ancestry to six women whose descendants immigrated around 20,000 years ago, a DNA study suggests.

Those women left a particular DNA legacy that persists to today in about about 95 percent of Native Americans, researchers said.

The finding does not mean that only these six women gave rise to the migrants who crossed into North America from Asia in the initial populating of the continent, said study co-author Ugo Perego.

The women lived between 18,000 and 21,000 years ago, though not necessarily at exactly the same time, he said.

The work was published this week by the journal PLoS One. Perego is from the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation in Salt Lake City and the University of Pavia in Italy.

The six "founding mothers" apparently did not live in Asia because the DNA signatures they left behind aren't found there, Perego said. They probably lived in Beringia, the now-submerged land bridge that stetched to North America, he said.

Connie Mulligan of the University of Florida, an anthropolgist who studies the colonization of the Americas but didn't participate in the new work, said it's not surprising to trace the mitochondrial DNA to six women. "It's an OK number to start with right now," but further work may change it slightly, she said.

That finding doesn't answer the bigger questions of where those women lived, or of how many people left Beringia to colonize the Americas, she said.

8 February 2008

Viking Blood Courses Through Veins Of Many A Northwest Englander

The blood of the Vikings is still coursing through the veins of men living in the North West of England — according to a new study which has been just published.

Focusing on the Wirral in Merseyside and West Lancashire the study of 100 men, whose surnames were in existence as far back as medieval times, has revealed that 50 per cent of their DNA is specifically linked to Scandinavian ancestry.

The collaborative study, by The University of Nottingham, the University of Leicester and University College London, reveals that the population in parts of northwest England carries up to 50 per cent male Norse origins, about the same as modern Orkney.

More......

4 February 2008

Budweiser Traces Your Family Tree To Roots In Africa

Anheuser-Busch and its flagship brand Budweiser will help one person win the chance of a lifetime: discovering their family’s origins and the opportunity to travel to that destination to retrace their family’s history.

The sweepstakes, "Discover Your History", provides a grand prize that includes a trip for the winner and three guests to explore their ancestral background as determined via genetic testing. The journey includes round-trip air transportation and two double-occupancy hotel rooms for up to nine nights and a completed family tree. Nine First Prizes also will be awarded and consist of genetic genealogy testing and ancestral family tree research. Official sweepstakes rules, instructions and an online registration form can be obtained at www.budweiser.com.

More......

22 January 2008

UK: Civil rights fears over DNA "census"

More than 100,000 people, including children as young as 10, will be asked to provide saliva tests and DNA samples in a new annual survey of the lives, behaviour and beliefs of people in the United Kingdom.

The UK Household Longitudinal Study will replace the long-running British Household Panel Survey. It will be the most expensive and ambitious survey of its kind in the world, costing an initial ÂŁ15m and covering 40,000 households.

More......

6 December 2007

Sell My DNA

SellMyDna.com offers to help you sell a sample of your DNA to a research company, New Line Genetics, who will then obtain a patent for it. They pay $5000!

SellMyDNA.com does not condone the patenting of other’s DNA without their permission. However, what better way to surprise your loved ones for a birthday or holiday event than giving the gift of $5,000 and the knowledge that their genetic material is helping to enhance scientific research!

However SellMyDna.com is not a real company, as you can find out if you dig deep enough into it’s site and come across the disclaimer: “these sites are a satirical “what if” pertaining to something that, for all intents and purposes, could be a reality in the not-so-distant future.”

24 October 2007

Genetic ancestral testing cannot deliver on its promise, study warns

For many Americans, the potential to track one's DNA to a specific country, region or tribe with a take-home kit is highly alluring. But while the popularity of genetic ancestry testing is rising - particularly among African Americans - the technology is flawed and could spawn unwelcome societal consequences, according to researchers from several institutions nationwide, including the University of California, Berkeley.

"Because race has such profound social, political and economic consequences, we should be wary of allowing the concept to be redefined in a way that obscures its historical roots and disconnects from its cultural and socioeconomic context," says the article published on Thursday, Oct. 18 in the journal Science.

The article recommends that the American Society of Human Genetics and other genetic and anthropological associations develop policy statements that make clear the limitations and potential dangers of genetic ancestry testing.

More......

8 October 2007

DNA sample work booming

The Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation has reported unprecedented growth in its DNA sample collection and analysis activities.

The nonprofit scientific organization is creating a gigantic database of correlated genetic and family history information.

The foundation is on course this year to collect more than 30,000 DNA samples, expected to push it over the top of 100,000 samples and corresponding genealogical records by the end of the year.

More......

1 October 2007

Lost Romanov bones 'identified'

Russian scientists have said they may have identified the missing remains of two of Tsar Nicholas II's children, who were executed after the revolution.

Experts said it was "highly probable" the remains found near Yekaterinburg in July were Alexei, the heir to the throne, and Maria, his elder sister.

They were missing when most of the family's remains were found in 1991. The tsar, his wife and five children were shot dead by a Bolshevik firing squad in Yekaterinburg on 17 July 1918.

More......

27 September 2007

Computer Program Traces Ancestry Using Anonymous DNA Samples

A group of computer scientists, mathematicians, and biologists from around the world have developed a computer algorithm that can help trace the genetic ancestry of thousands of individuals in minutes, without any prior knowledge of their background. The team’s findings will be published in the September 2007 edition of the journal PLoS Genetics.

More......

20 September 2007

Mystery Boy in Iron Coffin Identified

Researchers have solved the mystery of the boy in the iron coffin.

The cast-iron coffin was discovered by utility workers in Washington two years ago. Smithsonian scientists led by forensic anthropologist Doug Owsley set about trying to determine who was buried in it, so the body could be placed in a new, properly marked grave.

The body was that of 15-year-old William Taylor White, who died in 1852 and was buried in the Columbia College cemetery, they announced Thursday.

More......

21 August 2007

Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation selected for 2007’s ‘Best Family History Web Sites’ by Family Tree Magazine

Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation (SMGF), a non-profit scientific organization with the world’s largest correlated genetic and genealogy catalog of more than five million records from 172 countries, has been named by Family Tree magazine to its annual list of the 101 best family history Web sites in the Sept. 2007 issue. The free, online SMGF database is unique because it can link an individual’s genetic profile to specific ancestors by name going back a half-dozen generations and further.

Family Tree magazine is the largest-circulation genealogy magazine in the U.S., and is written for a flourishing consumer audience. Ancestry research is booming today, and much of it is taking place on thousands of genealogy Web sites.

More......

8 August 2007

DNA Testing for Adoptees

Adoptees often seek DNA testing because they want to learn more about their birth parents, ethnic background, or gene-related medical history. DNA tests also have other surprising roles in adoption.

More......

30 July 2007

The genes that build America

From the discovery that presidential hopeful Barack Obama is descended from white slave owners to the realisation that the majority of black Americans have European ancestors, a boom in 'recreational genetics' is forcing America to redefine its roots. Paul Harris pieces together the DNA jigsaw of what it really means to be born in the USA.

More......

13 June 2007

DNA Insight Into America's Oldest Mystery

Decades before the founding of Jamestown and and the Pilgrims' arrival, English settlers built a colony at Roanoke in what is now North Carolina. For several years, it relied on supplies shipped from England -- but when a ship arrived in 1590 after a three-year interruption in supplies, Roanoke was utterly deserted. Carved cryptically on a tree was a word, Croatan, the name of a local Native American tribe.

More......