Date: Sat, 2 Dec 2017 18:10:21 -0330 (NST)
From: David Pike 
To: pike-dna-l@rootsweb.com
Subject: Pike DNA Project News



Hi everybody.

I'll get to some news about recent DNA results within the Pike DNA Project 
a bit later in this email message.  But first I want to say a few words 
about the conference hosted by Family Tree DNA a few weeks ago.  Both 
Stuart (the other administrator for our project) and I were in attendance, 
which gave us the opportunity to chat about various things face to face. 
One of them was how to go about recruiting more Pikes into our project, 
especially since genealogy message boards seem to not be used by people as 
much as they once were.  We didn't come up with any grand solutions, so we 
would welcome suggestions if any of you have ideas that could help. 
Something that Stuart is wondering if any of our members might be able to 
assist with promoting our project in newspapers or other media (including 
online sites such as Wikipedia).

As for other news from the conference, it was very interesting to hear 
about the expansions that have been taken within the Family Tree DNA lab. 
When I went on their lab tour last year, the lab occupied about half of 
the eighth floor of the building out of which FTDNA operates.  The lab now 
occupies the entire floor, has a new expanded refridgerated sample storage 
unit, and other new equipment, some of which had to be delivered by 
temporarily removing windows and lifting it in with a crane.  The outlook 
for the company's operations is quite positive.

The web interface that we use also has several improvements that are being 
worked on.  For instance, there will be better integration of family trees 
on the FTDNA website, and the options regarding email notifications about 
genetic matches and which matches are visible through the FTDNA website 
will be separated into two distinct settings (currently there is a single 
setting that applies to both situations).  For people who have results 
from the Big Y test, a new interface to view results is now in place (and 
some extra enhancements are in the works)... I've been looking forward to 
this new interface for a long time and am happy with what I have so far 
seen of it.  FTDNA also announced some new developments with the Big Y 
test itself.  For instance, effective immediately everybody who takes the 
Big Y test will be upgraded to 111 STR-based Y-DNA markers at no 
additional cost.  And sometime in the new year, Big Y testers can expect 
to have a few hundred additional STR-based markers reported as well... 
this is a development that comes from some in-depth analysis of Big Y data 
performed by FTDNA's Bioinformatics Scientist who was hired earlier this 
year.  The Big Y test is fast becoming positioned to be the gold standard 
test that we should all strive towards.

One more note from the conference:  there was some discussion among 
attendees about what to do in cases of project members who are deceased. 
This is a very real concern for many projects.  Within our Pike project, 
I'm aware of 18 project members who are no longer with us.  Although we 
ask on our project's consent form whether project members will allow 
posthumous upgrades to be performed, another option, and one that I would 
encourage people to do, is to login to your personal FTDNA webpage, click 
on "Manage Personal Information" in the left menu, then click on 
"Beneficiary Information" and then enter the contact information for 
whomever should manage your DNA results after your death.  Feel free to 
list me or our project as your beneficiary if you don't have anybody else 
in mind.

For more news from the conference, a list of various blog reports can be 
found here: 
https://cruwys.blogspot.ca/2017/11/ftdnas-13th-international-genetic.html

Turning now to some of the latest DNA results within our project, in July 
we received results for kit number 665547 (who presently remains as an 
anonymous project member on our public website).  This participant tested 
37 STR-based markers and was found to be a perfect match with one of the 
members of our "Group 2" cluster, which consists of Pikes with ancestry 
from eastern Newfoundland, suggesting that this is likely where the 
ancestors of participant 665547 also came from.

Another newcomer to our project is Wayne (kit 746537) who also tested 37 
STR-based markers.  His genealogical records had previously indicated a 
relationship with the Pike family from Headcorn in the English county of 
Kent.  His DNA results confirmed this relationship, and also turned up 
something interesting.  If you look at the results on display for "Group 
15" at 
http://www.math.mun.ca/~dapike/family_history/pike/DNA/index.php?content=results.html 
you will note that Wayne is a first cousin of Walter (140027), both of 
whom are fifth cousins to David (70319).  However, on the 18th STR marker, 
Wayne and Walter do not match.  Rather it is Wayne and David who match. 
What this indicates is that Walter or his father likely experienced a 
mutation on this marker, taking it from an ancestral value of 23 (the 
value shared by Wayne and David) to 22 (which is what Walter has).

The most recent set of test results is for anonymous participant 769328 
who also tested 37 STR-based markers.  His results do not yet have any 
close matches within our project and so his results have been included in 
the "Ungrouped" section of results on our webpage.

On a closing note, I want to remind everybody that for each of the next 
several weeks FTDNA will be issuing coupon codes to all of its customers. 
If you find that you have a coupon that you won't be using, please 
consider making it available to other project members by posting it to our 
project's Activity Feed at 
https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/pike/activity-feed
Note that you will likely have to first login at FTDNA before you can post 
to the Activity Feed.

Thanks,

- David (dapike@mun.ca)