Sunday 10 January 2021

Genetic Groups on MyHeritage: 5 What Next?

In previous posts I've put down some First Thoughts on MyHeritage's new Genetic groups, discussed their Ethnicity Estimates and Historical Maps and found them both wanting, and had a first look at how the Groups themselves shape up in my own family, and found them very promising indeed. 

Here's a few ideas for next steps.

1 Match info
First off, MyH should add the Genetic Groups to the information it gives us about all our matches. This information is already quite substantial, but the GGs have the potential to add even more value to it. Up front, in the Match List, just below the Estimated Relationships, there's plenty of room:

2 Match filter
Next, add a Filter for 'Your Genetic Groups' 
at the top of the Match List, so that we can see in one list all matches who share a particular GG with us. Once again, there is plenty of room. This could be very revealing, and lead to immediate progress in tracing family connections.

3 Group info on segments
Let us see the segment information on which the Genetic Groups are based. This could be via an option to display a GG label on segments in the Chromosome Browser, for instance. This would immediately help us to distinguish maternal matches 
from paternal ones, and could even help us to further narrow down how these matches are related to us.

4 Maternal/paternal labels on segments
Once we have identified our closest maternal and paternal matches, MyH could possibly even automate the allocation of maternal and paternal sides to individual segments, thus taking the 'bucket' procedure used by FTDNA to a whole new level.

5 Pile-up info
MyH say they have taken segments of all sizes into account when compiling the Genetic Groups. I presume this includes the pile-up regions that are the bane of Ashkenazi Jewish genetic genealogy. 
Could it even be that the pile-ups themselves are pointing towards the Genetic Groups? For instance, could membership of a given GG be determined by a combination of specific pile-ups on specific chromosomes? If this is what is happening, MyH has all the info needed to identify this association for us.

6 Timeline
Following on from (5), might it then be possible to suggest a timeframe for the formation of these Genetic Groups? This could contribute towards our understanding of the patterns of migration of the AJ community, in particular the movement from Western Europe towards the East during medieval times, and even the origins of the community itself.

7 Time to MRCA
In turn, could (6) even lead us towards an estimation of Time to Most Recent Common Ancestor(s), for any given pile-up region? Where and when did a particular pile-up segment originate?

8 Location, location, location
How local can we get? In her original article - all of two weeks ago! - Roberta Estes said that MyH had "absolutely nailed" her Dutch ancestry, pinning one of her Genetic Groups down to an area 20 miles square.  I don't expect quite this level of precision for AJs - but ..... ???

9 Third Parties
I would love to see what our friends at DNA Painter and Genetic Affairs can dream up. I have in the past asked Jonny Perl at DNA Painter if they could find a way for AJs to identify our individual pile-up regions. Maybe he could offer us the option of colourising our Genetic Groups in the Chromosome Browser display? And Genetic Affairs' AutoClusters do not seem to be working for AJs as well as they do for non-endogamous groups. Can Evert-Jan Blom find a way of including MyH's Genetic Groups in the cluster information he gives us? We would then be able to see to what extent there is a correlation between the clusters, which are based on shared matches, and the GGs, which are based on shared segments - ie, actual DNA.

That's probably enough to be going on with.

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