Date: Sun, 22 May 2005 14:05:24 -0230 (NDT)
From: dapike@math.mun.ca (David Pike)
To: PIKE-DNA-L@rootsweb.com
Subject: [PIKE-DNA] Project Update


It's been a while since I lasted announced any news about the
Pike DNA project, so I thought I would take advantage of the
holiday weekend to compose an update on things.

To summarise our present status, we have 15 participants now,
and have results for all but one of them.  The lab is working on
the DNA sample for the one person with no results yet... they
estimate that his results will come out in early June.  We are
also currently waiting for results on markers 26-37 for one
participant... these are now overdue, so hopefully we won't have
to wait much longer.

Maybe the biggest piece of news in relation to our project over
the past while has been the semi-near match between Bryan (28606)
and Roger (33184), whose 25-marker results match on 21 markers,
but differ on 4 (with two of these 4 differing by a quantity of 2).
The "Results" page on our project website describes things in more
detail than I will here.  Basically, it seems that Bryan and Roger
are probably related in the distant past, but maybe not recently
enough to be genealogically significant.  There is lots of uncertainty
here though... although mutations are usually rare, it could be that
we're seeing the result of several of them that just happened to
occur in a short time span (that is, if Bryan and Roger are actually
somewhat more closely related than at first glance).  With more
project participants a bigger picture will emerge and we might
be able to tell what is actually be going on here.

Some projects make a point of highlighting success stories as
they arise.  With only 14 results so far in our project, our
successes are limited, but we do have a few:

1.  We have a clear description of the marker values for John Pike
    who settled in Massachusetts in 1635.  This is made possible by
    test results from 5 of his descendants (1 from one of his sons,
    and 4 from the other), and the lack of any differences among
    their test results.

    That there are *no* differences among these 5 test results is
    actually a bit surprising.  If we go with the assumption that each
    marker mutates at a rate of 0.2%, then the probability of there
    being no mutations among these 5 results would be about 17%.
    I'll skip the mathematical details, but will note that these
    5 participants form a tree with 41 births subsequent to John.
    With this many births, and with 12 or 25 markers observed, the
    number of opportunities for a mutation to occur among the
    results we have was 895, making it more likely overall that
    a mutation would have happened, somewhere, than nowhere at all.

2.  Peggy's brother's results (24697) closely matched those of John's
    family, with the only difference being a mutation on a single marker,
    namely marker DYS-390.  Results from a recent participant (32721)
    share this same mutation, but they also differ from Peggy's on two
    markers (out of the 25 that we can compare so far... we're waiting
    on an upgrade to 37 markers here).  If they can establish a common
    ancestor that lived several, say 4 or more, generations ago, then
    we would have established that their shared DYS-390 value has been
    around for a good while, meaning that other Pike's that are close to
    them on the family tree ought to share the same value.  The hope here
    is that a Pike who can trace his ancestry back to John will turn up
    with this same marker value, as that could help to narrow down which
    part of John's tree Peggy's family fits into (assuming, that is, that
    Peggy also descends from John).  This probably qualifies more as a
    success in the making than as a success to date, but even so, Peggy's
    near match to those of John's family do suggest that she fits in
    somewhere, and so she may be able to use the wealth of info about
    John's family to help locate paper records that have so far eluded
    her in tracing back her pedigree.

3.  Philip (27777) and I (David, 23996) have results that match on 24 out
    of 25 markers.  We've never met (at least not that I can recall),
    and although we both trace our ancestry back to the town of Carbonear
    in Newfoundland, we have both gotten stuck in tracing our ancestry.
    So although we do not know *how* we are related, we now know that we
    *are* related.  It remains to be seen if the many other Pike lines in
    Newfoundland are similarly related, or if some turn up to be for
    unrelated families.

4.  Pretty much all of the other test results in our project are nowhere
    near to matching any of the other results.  This too is a success, in
    the sense that it establishes that certain family groups are not
    related to one another, which in turn means that genealogists know
    not to pursue certain lines of research that they previously couldn't
    tell to be related or not.

It's a bit more mundane, but matching results also serve to validate
our past genealogical work.  For instance, people with a documented
relationship benefit from matching results because it gives them some
confidence that their paternal lines are as they thought they were.
It also helps to rule out instances of unreported adoptions, infedility,
or other scenarios that might have otherwise occurred in their lines
(since each of these scenarios would likely have resulted in test
results being substantially different when matches were expected).

The other major development in the realm of genetic genealogy was the
April launch of National Geographic's Genographic Project.  Details on
how those of us that have already been tested with FamilyTreeDNA can
upload our test results into the Genographic Project database are still
forthcoming.  However, it has been reported in a few places that the
response to the Genographic Project has been overwhelming.  In the first
five weeks alone, some 40,000 people have joined NG's project!  Moreover,
something on the order of 20% of them are from Europe.  I have no idea yet
as to whether any of these are Pike's, but this does bode well for the
fledgling field of genetic genealogy.

Anybody who receives this email and wishes to forward it on to somebody
who they think might be interested is free to do so.  In this regard, it
might be helpful to note that people who are interested in joining the
project but might not be able to afford the tests can be put onto a waiting
list for support from the project's General Fund.  Donations to the fund
are, of course, always welcome ... even if somebody isn't able to provide
a DNA sample on their own, they can still help to support the project by
contributing to the fund.

And finally, just so that anybody who gets this email doesn't have to hunt
around for the website for the Pike DNA project, here is its web address:

http://www.math.mun.ca/~dapike/family_history/pike/DNA

Take care,

- David.