Posts Tagged ‘genetics’

03
Jun
2020

A lot of things all in one post here, I guess.

categories: personal; word count: 264 words

Through slightly more careful observation, I’m speculating that the “first cousins” on my Ancestry matches page may be my mother’s (half-)sisters. Neither of them have responded to my messages, so it is what it is… for now. They may or may not know that she exists, or existed, if that is the case. Her father was never really in her life to begin with and actively avoided supporting her, although if I remember correctly my late grandmother had one picture of siblings that she had through him, and my mother told me that he died in the mid-nineties. But I have been talking to a more distant cousin of mine on Ancestry, and she dislikes organized theistic religion as much as I do, which is great. I intend on sending her a friends request on Facebook once I can, once I am done with this most recent post block and comment block. (And ironically, for Mark Zuckerberg kissing Trump’s ass not being willing to take a harder line against the shit he says on social media, a lot of people are quitting Facebook, which I think is good. Maybe Facebook will stop being popular.)

And since I’ve joined so many Discord servers, I’ve actually left some of the ones that I didn’t chat as much in to cut down on the amount of ones that I am a member of, because I couldn’t juggle all of them at once. It was (and is) nothing personal to the ones that I did quit! It’s just that I can’t juggle being in so many servers.

15
Apr
2020

So to 23andMe, Scotland isn’t its own country?

categories: personal; word count: 232 words

As a “non-filer”, I’m still waiting on our economic stimulus payment. Not sure how long we’ll be waiting.

Meanwhile, I’ve continued to do more research into my genealogy. It honestly seems like 23andMe does not “regard” Scotland as its own separate country to report, instead lumping it in with British & Irish on the Ancestry Composition page based on what other researchers have reported (particularly on sites like Reddit). However, a lot of Scottish DNA can also be found in the more gerund Broadly Northwestern European section, and sometimes also in the Broadly European section as well. If I take the time to click on the British & Irish section and see which cities 23andMe estimates that I have significant ancestry in, though, it literally lists Glasgow City as one of the top cities, which… wait for it… is in Scotland. Not to mention the fact that some genealogical research done on my paternal grandmother’s last name reveals Scottish origin.

And then there’s the whole 25% of me that Ancestry has relegated Irish & Scottish.

It would be helpful if 23andMe would make an effort (at some point after the pandemic) to isolate Scottish DNA and origins for, you know, the people taking their test that have Scottish DNA. Because I know that I am fairly sizably Scottish. It would be great for me to be able to study that with them in slightly better detail.

25
Feb
2020

Well, I did a little bit of research here, and…

categories: personal; word count: 486 words

23andMe and Ancestry don’t seem to be the best at gauging relatives that you may have when they are only half-related to you. For instance, they may tell you that you have a first cousin based on the percentage of DNA that you share with them because that is the percentage of DNA that you would be estimated to share with a first cousin if that were a conventional relationship, but if that person is only a half-relative to you, that person may not actually be your first cousin… am I making any sense? Because in the case of my highest match on 23andMe, the “first cousin” that I have there, he is actually my biological half-uncle, which I was able to confirm because his daughter (who is actually my half-cousin if you want to get symmetrical about all of this) read the message that I sent him since she has access to his account and actually corresponded back with me. She’s also awesome, by the way. But getting back to what I had originally been writing about… I began looking into my two highest matches on Ancestry, which were more than 10%, which is statistically significant. That would normally put you in the ballpark of first cousin, but once I was able to find out a little bit more about them, they were so much older than me (not knocking you for your ages if you find my blog and read this!) that it was, and is, actually unlikely that they are both indeed my first cousins.

It seems more likely that they are my half-aunts (or my half-great aunts, but half-aunts seems more likely).

Given the gap in our ages, it actually seems more likely that they may be the biological half-sibling to one of my parents. And since both of my parents have, for all intents and purposes, an unknown biological parent of their own, I can’t immediately identify which one of those it might be by virtue of “the one with the unknown parent”. And based on the research that I have done, my two highest matches on Ancestry are sisters to one another. I did send both of them nice, polite messages when I found out that we were of the relation that we were… one of them when I got my own results back from Ancestry, and the other one when she came up as the high match to me that she did on Ancestry, because she is now my highest match. I can only hope that, at some point in time, I get a response back from either one of them, or someone on that side of the family. If possible, I would like to get to know them, because I’m under the impression that they had (or have, until they see those messages) no idea that I existed until now. And a lot of them are on Ancestry, too.

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