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Breaking News! MyHeritage and 23andMe Partnership
This just in: Genealogy and family networking giant MyHeritage just announced a partnership with personal genetics company 23andMe. Here we share highlights from a press release, followed by comments from Your DNA Guide here at Genealogy Gems, Diahan Southard:
“We have some breaking news today at MyHeritage – we’ve just announced an important new collaboration and product integration between MyHeritage and leading personal genetics company 23andMe….
23andMe pioneered autosomal DNA analysis, which can find relatives across all ancestral lines, and has built the largest autosomal DNA ancestry service in the world. MyHeritage’s 5.5 billion global historical records, 1.5 billion family tree profiles in 27 million family trees and innovative matching technologies, combined with 23andMe’s DNA analysis, will provide users with an integrated and enhanced experience to uncover their family history.
Combining documented genealogy – family trees, family stories and family memories – with DNA-based ancestry is the next evolution in family history research. While DNA testing can find relatives from shared ancestors, it’s the family trees and historical records that are critical to fully map and understand these connections….”
Hmmm….what to make of this? Diahan Southard comments:
“The announcement of the collaboration between 23andme and My Heritage is definitely good news for genealogists. This proves that influential genealogy companies and popular genetics companies are recognizing that genetic genealogy is a team buy ear mite medication sport. We need both genetics and traditional genealogical methods to tell the full story of our ancestry. I think this is a move that both companies needed to make in order to face the increased competition from competitors.
It also shows that the genetic genealogy industry is nearly bursting with new ideas and new collaborations, which means more innovation and more competition, ultimately leading to a better experience for us as genealogists as we try to integrate DNA testing into our research.
While the details of the collaboration are thin, we will watch anxiously over the next few months to learn how integrated the two companies will become, and then we can determine the best ways to use the tools of both to fill in the holes in your family tree.”
Read more about the collaboration and product integration between MyHeritage and 23andMe in a MyHeritage blog post or watch the video below where MyHeritage Founder and CEO, Gilad Japhet, break the news live on Bloomberg TV earlier today.
Want to learn more about DNA? Check out Your DNA Guide Diahan Southard’s series of laminated quick reference guides to genetic genealogy:
AncestryDNA Results Improving for Jewish and Hispanic Ancestry
Ancestry.com has improved the ability of AncestryDNA to find good matches for Jewish, Hispanic and other ancestries that maybe weren’t so precise before. Here’s the lowdown, quoted liberally from Ancestry.com’s press release:
The problem: Predicting genetic relatives among customers of Jewish and Hispanic descent and some other groups. “In DNA matching, we are looking for pieces of DNA that appear identical between individuals,” says the release. “For genealogy research we’re interested in DNA that’s identical because we’re both descended from a recent common ancestor. We call this identical by descent (IBD). This is what helps us to make new discoveries in finding new relatives, new ancestors, and collaborating on our research.”
“However, we also find pieces of DNA that are identical for another reason. At one extreme we find pieces of DNA that are identical because it is essential for human survival. At the other, we find pieces of DNA that are identical because two people are of the same ethnicity. We call these segments identical by state (IBS) because the piece of DNA is identical for a reason other than a recent common ancestor. This, we have found, often happens in individuals of Jewish descent.”
“The challenge in DNA matching is to tease apart which segments are IBD, and which ones are IBS….Most Jewish customers find that we predict them to be related to nearly every other Jewish customer in the database….Detecting which cousin matches were real and which ones were bogus has always been a challenge for these populations.”
First step toward a solution: “By studying patterns of matches across our more than half a million AncestryDNA customers, we found that in certain places of the genome, thousands of people were being estimated to share DNA with one another–likely a hallmark of a common ethnicity. Our scientific advancements… have allowed us to effectively “pan for gold” in our matches–by throwing out matches that appear to only be IBS, and keeping those that are IBD.”
“While the problem was more pronounced in customers of Jewish and some Hispanic descents, we observed this problem across all ethnic groups. So, all customers will see increased accuracy of their DNA matches, and significantly fewer ‘false’ matches.”
AncestryDNA results with better matches found by this method “will be available in the coming months,” says the release. They plan to email existing customers when results are ready.
Are you pursuing DNA testing on your family tree (or do you want to get started)? Our inexpensive quick guides can help! These guides are laminated and can be shipped throughout the U.S.
- Getting Started: Genetics for the Genealogist, can help you understand which tests to take and where to take them.
- Y Chromosome DNA for the Genealogist is the tool to get you started with yDNA testing (on your paternal line).
- Autosomal DNA for Genealogists (NEW!) guides you through the popular test option now available through AncestryDNA and other companies.
- Get all 3 in a bundle for an even better price!
Genealogical Double-Dating?!? The Julian Calendar Explained
Do you know about the Julian calendar and how it can REALLY throw your genealogy research off?
I knew about this but I’ve never heard it explained as simply as Margery Bell does in the Family History podcast episode 43, just republished and re-released on the Genealogy Gems website. Click on the link to see show notes from the episode with a great summary of what the Julian calendar is and how it can affect your research.
In this podcast episode you’ll learn things like:
- the definition of “double-dating” in the historical calendar and how to interpret those dates;
- the fact that different countries switched over from the Julian calendar at greatly different times;
- why Washington’s birthdate, as recorded in his family Bible, is not the birthdate celebrated today in the U.S.;
- why several days are missing from the 1752 calendar;
- how to translate dates from the Julian calendar to today’s Gregorian calendar.
I hope you enjoy this FREE podcast episode! And why not share it with a genealogy buddy? It’s a great topic for beginning and more experienced family history researchers.
