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review of scientific and news articles on dna testing and popular genetics

Autosomal DNA Testing is Newest Wave

Wednesday, April 07, 2010

DNA Consultants’ 18 Marker Ethnic Panel Reveals Native American, Jewish, Other Hard-to-Find Lines in Your Family Tree

PHOENIX – (April 7, 2010) – The market leader in autosomal DNA testing for ancestry, DNA Consultants announced that it has introduced the latest enhancement to its DNA Fingerprint Test™ ancestry tool. The add-on to its popular all-in-one ancestry tracing product is called the 18 Marker Ethnic Panel and sells for $50.00.

“With the 18 Marker Ethnic Panel, you can easily verify Native American, Ashkenazi Jewish, African and other ethnic lines that may be hidden in your family tree,” said Donald Yates, the company’s founder and principal scientist. “If you get a check mark for Native American marker I or II from either parent, you have Native American ancestry…it’s that simple.”

Like the DNA Fingerprint Test upon which it is based, the 18 Marker Ethnic Panel uses the same unique DNA profile familiar from television police shows like CSI. The markers were discovered by the company last August after statistical validation showing they reflected population splits in early human migrations.

“We’re not talking about ancient history,” said Yates. “These markers reflect recent genetic contributions to your overall ethnic mix within a relatively shallow time frame of about the last ten generations.” The reason, he said, was that Native American and the other types of DNA are “so distinctive their genetic signature lasts and never completely goes away.”

The 18 Markers include tell-tale evidence for Native American, Mediterranean, East European, Ashkenazi Jewish, Sub-Saharan African, Asian and several other definitive ethnic groups.

“The test doesn’t tell you how much of that ancestry you have,” Yates added. “It only tells you if you have it, even if it is a minor line.” The panel also reports whether you have a given ethnic heritage from one parent or both.

To obtain the 18 Marker Ethnic Panel you must first order or submit results from a DNA Fingerprint Test. The core test is a comprehensive analysis of all your ancestral lines and gives you matches to populations and countries around the world where you have accumulations of ancestry. It sells for $250.00. Combined with the new 18 Marker Ethnic Panel, the test is called DNA Fingerprint Plus and costs $300.00.

Order online at dnaconsultants.com or call toll free 1-888-806-2588.

For more information, maps and sample report, visit DNA Consultants’ product page for the DNA Fingerprint Plus at:

http://dnaconsultants.com/_product_60282/DNA_Fingerprint_Plus.

DNA Consultants’ complete and total ancestry analysis is based on human prehistory but detects recent ethnic contributions to your DNA.

Donald Yates discovered

new DNA markers in 2009.

NATIVE AMERICAN I

NATIVE AMERICAN II (Hispanic)

EUROPEAN I ( Mediterranean )

EUROPEAN II

EASTERN EUROPEAN I

EASTERN EUROPEAN II

ASHKENAZI JEWISH I

ASHKENAZI JEWISH II

ASHKENAZI JEWISH III

TATAR/KHAZAR

ASIAN I

ASIAN II

SUB-SAHARAN AFRICAN I

SUB-SAHARAN AFRICAN II

SUB-SAHARAN AFRICAN III

SUB-SAHARAN AFRICAN IV

AUSTRALOID/SOUTHEAST ASIAN

FINNIC/URALIC

Ethnic admixture markers included in the DNA Fingerprint Plus 18 Marker Ethnic Panel range from Native American to Sub-Saharan African.

Press Release dated April 7, 2010

DNA Consultants

Home of the DNA Fingerprint Test

26438 N. 42^nd Way

Phoenix, AZ 85050

Tel. (480) 292-9820

Website: www.dnaconsultants.com

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Bradshaw Foundation, Stephen Oppenheimer, INORA

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Bradshaw Foundation
www.bradshawfoundation.com

A Phoenix business contact recently turned me on to the most fascinating website I have yet encountered devoted to prehistoric times and the migrations of humans. Named after the age-old and stunning Bradshaw rock art inscriptions in Australia, the Bradshaw Foundation focuses on rock art around the world and the brilliant discoveries of Oxford geneticist Stephen Oppenheimer. Its website even offers films and podcasts. Here is how the organization describes itself:

The Bradshaw Foundation until now has been discovering, documenting and preserving ancient rock art around the world. In October 2004 it received the Science & Technology Web Award 2004 (Anthropology and Paleontology) from Scientific American Magazine. The award coincides with the launch of the Bradshaw Foundation's latest development on its website: "The Journey of Mankind -The Peopling of the World". The Foundation has created an interactive map charting the global journey of modern humans over the last 160,000 years. It demonstrates the interactions of migration with climate over this period. Based on a synthesis of the mtDNA and Y chromosome evidence with archaeology; climatology and fossil study; Stephen Oppenheimer has tracked the routes and timing of migration, placing them in context with ancient rock art around the world.

The Bradshaw Foundation until now has been discovering, documenting and preserving ancient rock art around the world. In October 2004 it received the Science & Technology Web Award 2004 (Anthropology and Paleontology) from Scientific American Magazine. The award coincides with the launch of the Bradshaw Foundation's latest development on its website: "The Journey of Mankind -The Peopling of the World". The Foundation has created an interactive map charting the global journey of modern humans over the last 160,000 years. It demonstrates the interactions of migration with climate over this period. Based on a synthesis of the mtDNA and Y chromosome evidence with archaeology; climatology and fossil study; Stephen Oppenheimer has tracked the routes and timing of migration, placing them in context with ancient rock art around the world.

Another delight I discovered at the Bradshaw Foundation's site was INORA, International Newsletter on Rock Art.

With 3 publications per year, in French and English, INORA presents an international forum on ancient rock art and associated areas of archaeology, paleaontology and anthropology.

Edited by Dr Jean Clottes, Former Director of the Chauvet Research Team, funded (or subsidized, or sponsored) by the Ministère de la Culture and the Département de l’Ariège, the newsletter presents the latest discoveries of rock art from around the world. It provides a platform for discussion and debate of current theories and controversies. It examines past, present and future documentation and dating techniques, and their interpretation. It provides online database sources for related literature. The bound copy contains photography, illustrations and bibliographies.

DNA Consultants customers and especially those who have taken the DNA Fingerprint Test will want to check out these resources for understanding human prehistory posthaste! The Bradshaw genetic journey is far more detailed, absorbing and convincing than National Geographic's National Genographic Project.

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Newest Research Confirms Beachcomber Route to Asia out of Africa

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Other Companies Must Revise Their Human Migration Maps

Since Stephen Oppenheimer's The Real Eve suggested that the main out-of-Africa migration of humans proceeded across the mouth of the Gulf of Suez and around the coasts of Arabia, India and Southeast Asia (the "beachcomber route"), controversy has raged about the origin of Asians, whether they split off from the first out-of-Africa groups, sometimes called macro-haplogroup M, in the north central Asian highlands or the Middle East or elsewhere. A massive project spearheaded by the Chinese has put that question to rest. The 40-institution HUGO Pan-Asian SNP Consortium "strongly concludes the southern route made a more important contribution to East and Southeast Asian populations than the northern route," says Li Jin, a population geneticist at Fudan University in Shanghai, China. Jin was one of the lead authors of a study reported in Science, vol. 326, no. 5959, p. 1470, "SNP Study Supports Southern Migration Route To Asia," by Dennis Normile.

DNA Consultants has always followed Oppenheimer's model of the settlement of Asia, but other companies, including the National Geographic Genographic Project with over 200,000 customers purchasing their product, inform their customers differently. Most human migration maps displayed by DNA companies and the news media show Asians splitting off from Europeans and Native Americans in the northern latitudes of Central Asia and do not depict a southern "beachcomber" route at all.

Newly proven southern migration routes.

In July of this year, DNA Consultants discovered ethnic markers it released in its 18 Marker Ethnic Panel that prove a southern divide and origin for Asian populations as in the new study.

According to the Science report, "Anthropologists, ethnographers, and linguists have long struggled to understand the patchwork-quilt diversity of Asia. Indonesia alone claims some 300 ethnic groups; the Philippines has 180 native languages and dialects. Where did they all come from?"

So the previously dominant theory of two major waves of migration from the Middle East must now yield to just one initial migration along the coastal route with populations moving north into East Asia from India and Southeast Asia (see map).

The new study is vindication for the Chinese genetics community, which has often been dismissed and rejected by European and American geneticists. Vincent Macaulay, co-author with Martin Richards of the seminal paper followed by most DNA testing companies, " Tracing European founder lineages in the Near Eastern mtDNA pool," (American Journal of Human Genetics, 67, 1251-1276), when asked about the new findings admitted that the southern coastal route now "seems very strong," as quoted in Science.

Human Migration Map from DNA Consultants' 18 Marker Ethnic Panel.

The study used samples from more than 1900 individuals representing 73 populations and involved 93 researches at 40 institutions in 11 countries and regions in Asia. It was "conceived by Asians in Asia and executed, funded, and completed by an Asian consortium," said Edison Liu, executive director of the Genome Insitute of Singapore. Researchers screened each individual for more than 50,000 SNPs.

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Sarah James commented on 11-Dec-2009 01:51 AM

I seem to recall that the debate about the beachcomber and other possible routes has been knocking around in anthopological circles for a while - at least since the 80s when I was studying anthropology in London. What's wonderful is that the beachcomber route has now been verified, but in the meantime one wonders how many NGGP clients, for example, may believe their ancestral migrations differed, and how widely this scientific breakthrough will be dissemintaed in the public media.

But well done DNA Consultants, and congratulations to the HUGO Pan-Asian SNP Consortium!

Dan commented on 11-Dec-2009 08:30 AM

Makes sense really. What would a regular person do other than follow the warm beach. It seems less likely that a person would go to a cold climate and say "aaahhh this is the place" unless the beach was already taken by someone else.

Nancy Sparks Morrison commented on 11-Dec-2009 03:01 PM

Don,
very interesting research. Makes sense. Explains a lot and glad you were able to realize it before most! :-) Good going!

I intend to do the rest of the DNA next year~ Have loved what you found for me so far!
Nancy

M. Moore commented on 15-Dec-2009 01:43 PM

While I can not extend my knowledge or understanding to the level of Sarah James, I can certainly agree with her comment. Very well written and explained. New discoveries or corrected history?

James R Carney commented on 23-Dec-2009 01:05 PM

This is a very interesting finding. As we have studied the coastal settlements in the south for quite sometime, your research has been fascinating and very plausible with the oral traditions of settlement of the Gulf Coast States in pre American (English Atlantic Coast Settlements). In this New DNA Study Science there is much to learn and most is theory. As students of any science, or academics, we must all keep an open mind and allow for discussion of all possibilities, otherwise we might miss the one great aha Moment. Your openness to research is very refreshing and rewarding.
Keep it up
DJ

Bookmakers commented on 30-Mar-2011 01:01 PM

Hello,I love reading through your blog, I wanted to leave a little comment to support you and wish you a good continuation. Wishing you the best of luck for all your blogging efforts

FOX News Showcases DNA Consultants

Thursday, December 03, 2009

Dr. Yates was interviewed by WBRC reporter Jeh Jeh Pruitt of FOX News Alabama at the company offices in Phoenix on October 22. The report was broadcast on affiliate stations in late November. Watch it on MyFoxAlabama.com.

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M. Moore commented on 15-Dec-2009 01:44 PM

I hope there are many more interviews with DNA Consultants. Kudos and Cheers!

Interview with Donald Yates on Blog Talk Radio

Saturday, November 07, 2009

Listen to a broadcast about "anomalous DNA" in the Cherokee by principal investigator Donald N. Yates on Blog Talk Radio from October 29. Host, Rick Ozman of the Oopa Loopa Cafe. Length: 2 hours.

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Officious or Official Regulation?

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Council of Europe adopts protocol on genetic testing for health purposes

In a report so-titled by Laurence Lwoff in the European Journal of Human Genetics (2009) 17, 1374–1377, first published online in July, it was noted that the Council of Europe has weighed in on one of the most controversial areas of DNA testing, whole-genome sequencing and SNP testing to find genetic predisposition to disease for individual customers. Recent editorials in Nature have called for similar measures in the United States, which is home to 23&me and other companies offering such services.

So far, no regulatory proposals have been aimed at genetic ancestry testing, only medical and health-related screening. One of the warnings often raised in the public discussion on genetic testing for health purposes, however, is that results may confuse and unnecessarily alarm consumers--a criticism that could apply equally to ancestry services. Another is that commercial research scientists and business operators may jump the gun with findings and peddle bad science, although critics admit that the state of knowledge on nearly every topic of interest to geneticists and medical researchers is in a constant state of flux. A finding about a gene for Alzheimer's will be trumpeted in the pages of a major journal one week only to be updated or withdrawn in the next.

This being the case, one wonders when discoveries will ever be fit to be commercialized or made available to the public. Should science only serve scientists?

We have always maintained that the would-be regulators underestimate moderately educated people's ability to understand emerging science. They overestimate commercial companies' disregard for professional practices and responsible communications. Most of the measures under discussion will have the effect of denying people access to valuable information. Regulation will also hamper growth in a direct-to-the-consumer business with unimaginable promise for society at large. A home paternity test purchased at the corner drugstore may make all the difference in the life of a family. Discovery of varied ancestry through a DNA test can be an important factor in furthering a consumer's interest in other peoples and countries, in history, and ultimately in tolerance of others. DNA testing can help bring peace of mind but it can also help bring peace in the world.

Many, if not most, of the innovative contributions to society by science have come from non-specialists. The scientific establishment is not oriented toward practical applications of knowledge. The Croatian inventor and engineer Nikola Tesla dropped out of college and never received any formal training. Driven entirely by his natural aptitude for learning, he patented some of the most important contributions to the birth of commercial electricity, including alternating current (AC) electric power systems and the AC motor. His inventions helped usher in the Second Industrial Revolution. So far from being overpowered by the profit motive, he died penniless at the age of 86 in 1943. No government program or university gave him any support or assistance. Whatever else the Council of Europe deliberated about, we hope they were not cynical or self-important enough to discount the possibility there may be many more popular scientists like Tesla in Europe's future. Science and technology are increasingly becoming a way of life for millions of people around the world who do not happen to have an advanced degree. It is a positive sign that consumers are so eager to take responsibility for their own health they will use the latest innovations from genomics to gain knowledge and control. Scientists should be glad they have such an impact. They should not squander the respect they enjoy in our eyes with pedantic discussions about fixing something that is not broken.

Isolated populations as treasure troves in genetic epidemiology: the case of the Basques

Paolo Garagnani et al. (2009) in European Journal of Human Genetics 17: 1490-1494.

The Basques living on the western border between Spain and France are a unique population. "Basques" often comes up as a match in people's DNA Fingerprint results, often because (as is widely believed, at least) a people resembling Basques helped repopulate the British Isles after the last Ice Age. But Basques are not an isolate. This article proves they blend gradually into their closest neighboring populations in Spain and France so they are not a candidate population, as say the Finns are, for the study of disease associations. "Basques do not show the genetic properties expected in population isolates," according to the authors. On the contrary, as many previous studies suggest, the Basques have so much diversity among themselves they were probably the source of population diffusions in prehistory, not a backwater trap for inbreeding.

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Anonymous commented on 22-Oct-2009 11:28 PM

This is most perplexing and sounds medieval. Does the Council of Europe think we are all children? Are they truly concerned that their citizens may become confused and alarmed? What planet are they living on currently? I suppose they are unaware (or have forgotten) that Darwin had a background in religion (how alarming). This is 2009 and the world is an alarming place. One gets rather used to it though after a number of years. There must be some other reason than this for their suggested protocol. Something truly alarming.

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DNA Consultants Home of the DNA Fingerprint

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Autosomal DNA Testing is Newest Wave

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Bradshaw Foundation, Stephen Oppenheimer, INORA

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Newest Research Confirms Beachcomber Route to Asia out of Africa

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FOX News Showcases DNA Consultants

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Interview with Donald Yates on Blog Talk Radio

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Officious or Official Regulation?

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