Genetic Groups on MyHeritage: 4 The Tales They Tell

 

The Genetic Groups assigned to myself and my brother by MyHeritageDNA
NB: Confidence levels: High - Medium - Low

Genetic Groups (First Thoughts) are the most significant new feature of the recent upgrade to MyHeritageDNA. They are doing something that I don't think is even on the radar of any of the other consumer-oriented DNA companies. They compare the autosomal DNA of thousands of people at the segment-level, and where they find sufficient similarities, they assign us to specific Genetic Groups. I think this approach has huge potential for those of us who are looking to uncover our genetic background, at both individual and community levels, and also for those seeking to discover new - or long-lost - family connections.

Not ours, but theirs
But first, let's dispose of the Ethnicity Estimates and Historical Maps presented to us by MyH as part of this "upgrade".

In previous posts (Who I Am and Who I Am Not, and Mapping the Past, or Not) I have been highly critical of both features. They are based on faulty logic, and are consequently highly misleading. Both purport to tell us about our ancestry, but in fact both are based not on our own genetic history but on that of the people we have DNA matches with. The "ethnicities" and maps are not ours, but theirs.

This pseudo-science culminates in the absurdity of a map of Europe in the period 1600-1650, which appears to portray Britain as being home to a substantial proportion of the continent's Ashkenazi Jews. At this time, of course, there weren't any Jews in Britain at all. Jews - all Jews - had been excluded from the country for over 300 years.

Both features should be consigned to the bin marked "In need of urgent attention". At the very least they both need to display a Genetic Genealogy Health Warning, prominently and immediately. Maybe something along the lines of: "These Ethnicities and Maps can seriously damage your understanding of your genetic origins. Remember: they are not yours, they are those of your matches."

Genetic Groups
The Genetic Groups, on the other hand, appear to be built on a sound scientific basis. I shall look at what I think these Groups can bring to our family history research, and suggest ways in which the concept could be developed.

The chart at the top shows the Groups that have been assigned to myself and my brother. Both our parents were from Ashkenazi Jewish families, our mother's side from Poland and our father's from Belarus. I'm hoping that we can make some sort of sense out of these Groups. Are some of them paternal side, and some maternal? Is there a geographical logic to them? Or are they all one indistinguishable mess, as most of AJ genetic genealogy seems to be?

Note that MyH gives a us 'Confidence level' for each of these Groups, of High, Medium or Low. In the charts I have shown these in bold, normal, and italic script respectively.

I have been classified in 5 Genetic Groups, my brother Brian in 6 - the same 5 as I have, with one extra. For GG5215 and 5052, we are both High Confidence; I am High for GG5043 and Medium for 5073, whilst Brian is the other way round. We are both Medium for GG5032. Meanwhile Brian has a Medium for GG5227, which I don't seem to have at all.

So far, not so far. Brian and I are very similar, but not identical.

The cousins show up
However, I think there are indeed some interesting things to discover when we look at how some of our cousins show up.

Genetic Groups for myself, Brian and some of our cousins

NB: blue - paternal side, pink - maternal side

Brian and I have 14 known cousins on MyH-DNA, 7 on our paternal side (blue in the chart, from various places in Belarus), and 7 maternal (pink, from Central Poland 100km West of Warsaw, on or near the Vistula River). In the blue corner they range from Katy, a 1C1R (first cousin once-removed) to Gerald, a 3C1R. Katy shares all our ancestral families on the paternal side, the 2Cs represented here all share Ilyutovich and Levin, but not Schreibman, and the 3Cs share only Levin.

In the pink corner the cousins we have on MyH at the moment are a little more distant. The 4Cs share only Frankenstein, whilst the 3C-4C*2s are all closely related to each other - Arlene and Sandra are sisters, Daniel K and Laurie are also siblings, children of Sandra. This line is related to us twice over, via two brother/sister Frankenstein - sister/brother Zegelman marriages over 150 years ago.

As far as we know, there is no connection between our paternal and maternal sides, until our parents got together, of course. However, FTDNA does insist on telling us that a number of our matches there match us on both sides. We presume this is down to general AJ endogamy, especially given the geographical separation between the two sides over at least the past 200 years.

Intrigue
The resulting charts are intriguing; please note I am not necessarily looking at the Groups in order from left to right:

GG5215: nobody in the pink corner (maternal side) is in this Group, and there are only 2 blues; only one of these blues - Katy - has a High Confidence rating. She is our only Schreibman match on MyH at the moment. We can therefore confidently classify GG5215 as our Schreibman Genetic Group.

GG5073: has no pinks, but all the blues are there. GG5073 is therefore paternal, and associated with Belarus. Furthermore, the only High-rated cousins are the Ilyutoviches, who were from Lida in NW Belarus. Katy, who shares Ilyutovich, is Medium-rated, as are the 2 Levin cousins, who do not. Brian is High, I am Medium. This is our strongest Ilyutovich Group.

GG5052: is present across both blues and pinks - but all the pinks are High-rated; amongst the blues, only the Levins are High, whilst some of the Ilyutoviches are Low. This is clearly our main Frankenstein/Zegelman Group, and is based in West Central Poland. It could be that our Levins have a connection with this area that we do not (yet) know about. Or it could just be more general AJ endogamy creeping in.

GG5043: all cousins bar Katy share this Group. Only Gerald of the blues is rated High; on the pink side, only the double Frankenstein/Zegelman cousins are High. I am High, Brian is Medium. I don't think we yet in a position to definitively allocate this Group to paternal or maternal, to Belarus or to Poland.

GG5032: Brian and I are both Medium. No-one in either blues or pinks is rated High. All the pinks are in this group, but only half are Medium, the others are Low. On the blue side it is a bit more nuanced. All the Ilyutoviches have it, whereas of the others, only one Levin does, and he is Low. There are 2 Highs, Daniel and his nephew Jeffrey, one of whose lines is Rothstein from Miedrzyziec Podlaski in Eastern Poland, not far from the border with Belarus. So, more endogamy, but leaning towards E Poland.

GG5227: Brian is Medium, whilst I don't have this Group at all. The only others who have this Group are the two Rothsteins, and three of the Frankenstein/Zegelmans, but they are all weak. I'm guessing Central Poland for this one, maybe tending towards the East.

Strangeness and Litvaks
GG5031: this one is strange, as whilst neither Brian nor I have this group at all, most of our cousins on both sides do. Of the blues, Katy is High, and all the Ilyutoviches are Medium, as is Beatrice of the Levins. Of the pinks, all the Frankensteins and Zegelmans, bar Angela, appear, but at a lower rating than the blues. Katy's High rating is intriguing; this Group is clearly not a Schreibman Group - Brian and I would be there if it were. Katy's father's family is from Lithuania, and we have no known connection there, although Lida, our shared Ilyutovich area, is close to the Lithuanian border, and often came under Lithuanian influence. Maybe some of the other cousins have Litvak connections; we know little of their Trees outside how they connect to us.

As you would expect, there are further Groups like this last one that have some cousinly representation, but that Brian and I are absent from. However, there are not many of them, and our cousins' presence in them is sparser than in the Groups that we do share with them.

OK. That's a first analysis of our Genetic Groups. Fascinating, although at the moment I don't see much more that we can do with them. 

What next?