Many y-DNA haplogroups now have projects at Geni.com, a collaborative website for building family trees. More DNA projects are being added as information becomes available. Geni.com is a genealogy website, something on the order of Ancestry.com or Rootsweb.com — except that users share management of their common ancestors, and cooperate in the process of researching,…
Category: Genetics
Genome Quilts
Turn your DNA sequence into a quilt pattern? I was skeptical, but now I get it. Beverly St. Clair at Genome Quilts had the idea of turning the repeating bases in a DNA molecule into a quilt pattern. She created four different quilt blocks, representing adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G) and thymine (T). By…
Personal Genetics
The big news in the genetic world this month is personal genomic testing. With an infusion of cash from Google, a Silicon Valley company, 23andMe, has launched a genetic testing service. Customers pay $999 and give a DNA sample in the form of saliva. The company genotypes 580,000 SNPs across the 46 human chromosomes. After…
Genetic Strand: Exploring a Family History through DNA
In the Victorian era it was common to save a lock of hair when someone died. Edward Ball, author of Slaves in the Family, inherited an old desk, in which he found a cache of those locks. Genetic testing helped confirm that the family has a mixed race heritage. His new book tells the story…
New Certificates
Got my new certificates from Oxford Ancestors. Pretty to look at, but they don’t really change the fact that my results are being revised in part because of sloppy lab work. Take a look: