I’ve been poking into the reasons why my 1998 mtDNA test at Oxford Ancestors produced a different result than a 2007 test at FamilyTree DNA. FTDNA is standing by their results. Rebekah Canada on the Genealogy-DNA Mailing List assures me, “These days FTDNA tests for the V SNP in the coding region. If they say you are V you can count of being V.” Now, I hear from Oxford Ancestors:
“We have looked at the results for your MatriLine analysis and would advise that the position was as follows;
“A mutation at position 270 is characteristic of clade U and a position at 298 is characteristic of clade V. It was always believed in the early days that as clade U was the more common that it over rode the clade V, but more recent research has in fact confirmed that this is not in fact the case and the a mutation at position 298 is the defining one and you are therefore more correctly assigned to clade V and indeed this is where we would now place you.
“The 292 mutation would 99% of the time change the C to a T, but in your case it has changed to an A which is unusual. This mutation was automatically shown on your certificate as a T and should in fact have been shown, as you correctly say, as an A. We would also show this mutation as 2925.”
So, it seems that part of it was sloppy reporting (reported as 16292T when it should have been 16292A) and part of it was that more is now known about mtDNA haplogroups (reported as U5b when it should have been V). No apologies, but Oxford Ancestors did volunteer to send me a new certificate. Yay.
