To: PIKE-DNA@rootsweb.com
Date: Mon,  6 Nov 2006 21:11:07 -0330 (NST)
From: dapike@math.mun.ca (David Pike)
Subject: [PIKE-DNA] News from the FTDNA Conference


Hi everybody.

I got back home this morning at about 1:00am, having spent the
past few days at the FTDNA Project Administrators Conference.
It was a great conference, with 200 or more attendees.  What
I want to do in this email is to convey some details and other
things from the conference.

One interesting item is that the current tally of kits that
FTDNA has processed is over 220,000.  They are now processing
6 to 12 thousand kits monthly (including those coming in from
the NGS Genographic Project).  Not counting the Genographic kits,
FTDNA is processing about 4,000 kits monthly.

Regarding the Genographic Project, 168,000 kits have been ordered
to date.  Of these 150,000 have been returned, and of these
146,000 have had their results reported.  The number of transfers
from the Genographic Project into the FTDNA database was mentioned
to be about 35,000.

For people who tested with FTDNA and want to transfer their results
into the Genographic Project, the $15 transfer free still applies,
but now only needs to be paid once.  That is, for somebody who has
tested both Y-DNA and mtDNA, they can upload both results for just
a single upload fee.  [the transfer in the other direction, from
the Genographic Project to FTDNA is still free, as are uploads
from FTDNA to Y-Search and MitoSearch]

A few of the folks in our Pike project who recently received their
first DNA results got free (and unexpected) SNP tests that confirm
FTDNA's haplogroup prediction.  They did this for a group of about
1500 test kits, as a means of evaluating their haplogroup prediction
algorithm.  The algorithm held up pretty well, but nevertheless FTDNA
has now adopted a haplogroup assurance policy to the effect that
whenever somebody's Y-DNA markers yield an ambiguous haplogroup
prediction, FTDNA will perform a gratis SNP test to accurately
determine the haplogroup (similar to what they've been doing for
Genographic Project participants).

Several of the talks and presentations were very interesting and
exceptionally well presented.  The coordinator of the Estes surname
project presented a lively and humourous talk about her family's
DNA project, which has experienced a number of "non-paternity events"
(or unrecorded adoptions (even if the adoptive father isn't aware
that he's adopting) as she humourously said she now prefers to call
them).  In our Pike project, we haven't yet run across any cases
of NPEs (as non-paternity events tend to get abbreviated) in recent
generations (well, not that we are aware of), so I found it interesting
to hear how other admins had handled the various NPE situations that
they've come across.  One thing that warrants repeating:  it's love
and compassion that define a family, not always DNA.

Another of the presentations was made by an ethicist, to whom
several interesting (and challenging) questions were posed.
During her talk, and also during some other conversations, issues
of privacy were discussed.  I feel good that I've been asking
people to fill out a consent form before I post their name or
other personal details on our project's website.  But out of
concern for the risk of identity theft, I'm inclined to stop
posting people's full postal addresses.  So unless somebody in
our project explicitly tells me that they *want* their address
to be posted, then I'll be taking them off of our "Participants
and Pedigrees" page in the next while and replacing them with a
location that is no more specific than one's state/province/shire.

The conference also presented an opportunity for us to hear a
bit about some new products that FTDNA will be performing at the
new lab they are developing in Houston.  For instance, they are
now offering X-chromosome marker tests, and will be working on
developing some form of X-marker database.  They are also now
offering several tests for autosomal markers, which can come in
handy when trying to address questions of very close relationship
(such as when two people suspect that they might be biological
half-siblings, but don't actually know if this is the case).

Overall, I got a lot out of the conference and am really happy
that I chose to attend again this year.

- David.