DNA Testing in Poland. Is it popular?

Yes, SeanBM....that is the group, R1a that I referred to if I had some of the males in my family tested.

There is no Polish gene, but R1a is more prevalent among Slavs than Germans. One of the distant names in my family line is Pusch. On line I met a man with the same surname and he had his tests done. I asked him what were his results. His family had originated in Poland, but were considered German. His DNA was R1a so we concluded that his paternal male ancestors with the name Pusch had DNA more consistent with a Slavic origin.

There isn't an exact Polish gene, but I would say some genes are more common than others, so one could argue it's a gene with Polish tendency.

I will let Indians know that they have a tendency of actually being Polish right away, will I? :)

from wikipedia site about haplogroup r1a.

There is also a map showing that r1a7 is most common in Poland.

But yeah, I agree with SeanBM it's a little bit stupid to try track your roots after your genes.

Now that I started reading about it I find it interesting, this mutation R1a is estimated to be 18,000 years old.
There was no Poland back then, it was end of the last iceage, I am fascinated with this era in time and with such definitive evidence as DNA, it makes for an interesting story.

I don't know much about genes, only you suggested I check it out, so I did.

But despite that, it seems that the sites that can tell for money that you're "Polish" from your genes are just a scam. I would call it voodoo science. But maybe like fortune-telling it offers something else? a reassurance or something? I don't know I am just shooting in the dark.

In the future I would say it will be much more precise but for now it is far too general to give anything really accurate like a country, it appears.

The surnames of your grandparents would probably tell you a lot more about your histories than a very common gene.

yes, i get DNA testes very often and every time the score is different... ;)

genealogy.about.com/b/2010/11/10/family-health-history-better-than-genetic-screening.htm

Your family history / genealogy can only be checked by looking at documents and always assuming the truth was written in the first place.
one can be almost sure of the mother, but never certain about the father... at least when looking at historical records.
the whole genealogy thingy is based on trust alone.

But they don't claim that they can tell you that you're Polish or any other ancestry. At least, I've never seen that, but they do find your DNA matches to other people throughout the world. If your DNA markers match a large group of people in Poland it's up to you to decide what to think of that. But you obviously have some relatives over there.

With an 18000 year old gene, it is safe to say you have relatives everywhere in Europe at least.
World DNA

But fathers and sons, brothers, and cousins still carry those genes today and produce matches. Not all matches are that far back.

It's like saying that my dad and brother are related 18,000 years ago because they have the same DNA.

Of course, if they are related through blood then yes.


Which ones are not that far back?
We were talking about R1a but if you can show me a more modern mutation that'd be interesting.


I think we have some miscommunication here.
The heritage sites that want your money so they tell you something about genes and probability or even possibility from a R1a shared gene is nothing to do with closely related people in the way I think you are now talking about?

E.g.(if you were male) you share the R1a gene with many Polish, Indians and your father. What does this tell you? not much really.

On the chart, there's a greenish color in Africa and a purple color for Native Americans. When an African American or a Native American has the test done and gets those haplogroups as their results, does that mean they are related to African and Native American from thousands of years ago but they are not related to any other Africans or Native Americans today?

by the way, I have to go now....more later.

I will put it another way, we are all related to Africans.

Genes like this are very general ideas, first you get a mutation and then that mutation spreads to the next generation, so you can find the family but as the millennium continue the people spread geographically.

That's why I think it's voodoo science (for now) to charge people money for such a general indicator.


You can't really get more general than that.


No problem, take care.
I should be off too.

Aryans, and yes some conquered what is now India and mixed with black local population - nothing new there !

Did you know that Island has been genetically mixed with american Indians ? It means that the Vikings really were first in American :) or should we call this land Vinland ?

I'm not as familiar with Y-DNA as with mtDNA but mtDNA seems more recent and you can have a variety of markers and still belong to the same haplogroup.

My dad took the mtDNA test years ago and his haplogroup is thousands of years old and he has about twenty exact matches so far. We all exchanged information and they were all born in the same place as my dad or their parents or grandparents were. I mean within just miles of each other.

Then I took an autosomal test from a different company and I got matched to the same exact place where my dad was born.

It just seems weird to think that I'm not related to any of those people because the haplogroup is so old and that the location has nothing to do with my own ancestry on his maternal line.


Many places overseas have American Indian DNA including England and Spain, among others. I've seen stories about people in England who are stunned to find out that they Native American DNA. Native Americans were taken overseas after the Europeans encountered them and some escaped. But also, the Siberians or Mongolians who have the same DNA traveled that way, as opposed to the Americas.

While I am part of Haplogroup U5, so far my specific markers have matched up with only one other person in the world. And I've checked all the genealogy sites where people post their results, as well as belong to the Sorensen group whose goal is to show that we are all family.

I've attempted to email this one person who has the exact same markers as me and I cannot make contact. It would be interesting to compare notes. I believe she grew up in what was East Germany close to the Polish border, before marrying coming to America. That is what her profile reveals. My maternal Polish roots are in Poznan and Gniezno, so it is possible there is a connection in recent times.

This science never promises that even an exact match would be in recent times, but is quite possible. People with the same Haplogroup without exact markers are usually further back in time. Two differences can put you before recorded history. If I remember correctly.

This science can be put to good use if you are doing your genealogy and your surname is common. Like one in my family. Szmit/Schmidt. If you find a family from near where your family originates and see no connection in the records, a Y-DNA test can tell you if the males come from the same lineage. Or if you were adopted and had a desire to know something about your ancestry, you can get a pretty good idea of where you originated.

Y-DNA and mtDNA are just male and female, one can't be more recent than the other.(chicken or egg?:) Although Y-DNA is only from father to son, while mtDNA is from mother to children of both sexes.

The most recent appears to be H3 10,000 years old, while the oldest is Mitochondrial Eve 200,000 years ago (refers to the most recent common matrilineal ancestor from whom all living humans are descended).

Although oddly Y-chromosomal Adam probably lived later than Mitochondrial Eve did, possibly 50,000 to 80,000 years later. I know that these Adam and Eves are only theoretically all of our Great........grand parents but you'd think they were around at the same time :) Although what's 50,000 years between family? :)

I am not sure I understand this, you are saying that your father's haplogroup matches that of people living only in (for example) Poznan and only those that have been tested there or have relations from there?

I don't know much about DNA testing, I am just reading about it now that we are talking about it.


Haplogroup U5 Wiki

Among the oldest mtDNA haplogroups found in European remains of Homo sapiens is U5. The age of U5 is estimated at 50,000 but could be as old as 60,500 years. Approximately 11% of total Europeans and 10% of European-Americans are in haplogroup U5.[/quote]

Not just his haplogroup but his particular set of markers. All of his exact matches are from his hometown, meaning thousands, maybe millions of people in the world have been tested and his exact matches are only from that same location.

Here is the part I don't understand, not many people have had their DNA tested, so how do they know who has what?
Do they test a hundred people in a particular country and then come up with statistics for the whole country?
Or is it, of the people tested, they found that they share an ancestor who lived in and around (for example) Poznan and so far that's the only place it's been found?

They have a slew of test results from people who have either purchased the test or from prisoners. A lot of those companies use DNA from the prison system DNA bank but they also go to countries and get DNA from volunteers, like Sibera for example.

We've found documents online of people who have practically all the same markers as my Dad except for one difference and they live in the surrounding area of his birthplace but further out. That's how you can tell someone is not as closely related but still from the same tribe.

Thanks SeanBM, and U5 makes me related to the Cheddar Man in England.

But even though 10-11% of Europeans and European-Americans are part of that same group, my exact markers so far match only that one lady. I really wanted to compare our family tree. But none of her email addresses work.

Oh well, at least with traditional methods I am finding enough relatives all over Europe that I do know are my family. My grandmother was part of a family of seven children. Three came to America, and the other four stayed in Europe. After wondering about them from the time I was a teen from the unlabeled photographs, I finally found them after about ten years of hard work! And happily, they were excited when I contacted them. They always wondered what happened after my grandmother died. The first letter I received from my father's cousin said, "We are in awe, it has been so long since we heard from America." She's 90 and so I pictured this little old lady in a rocking chair covered with spider webs waiting and waiting. Well, not really...lol Anyway, now to collect some DNA from them...hehehehhe

Your doppelgänger? :)
You could be walking down the street in Europe and see your self on the other side of the street walking the other direction.
Do you think you'd get on well with yourself? :)

Fair play to you, I think we all wonder about the people in family photos.


That's a lovely story, long lost relatives from across time and space, wondering about each other, how romantic, how poetic :)

Was the National Geographic DNA project big in the U.S?

I prefer my easy "one-common-blue eyed-ancestor" theory!

I like that...all blue eyed people are my family...stemming from one mutant...6-10.000 years back...*let's huuuuuuuug*

:)

Ol' Blue Eyes himself, Frank Sinatra's family?

I prefer the idea that for over 200,000 years we have spread like seeds in the wind.

You can of course go back further and talk about our commonality to the other animals we share this planet with if you wanted :)

i thought that blue eyed are only newborn babies...

I have blue eyes and although you might think I was born yesterday, I am still not a newborn :)

Apparently not all kids are born with blue eyes.

ask.com is better then the Wiki nowadays? hehe....
my eyes color changes, it depends on a mood...



hmmm...

Ger off, your beard itches and I'm not lost I'm here, in fact I am always here, wherever here is, that's where I am :)

dnaancestryproject.com - National Geographic ancestry project looks interesting.


Horror movie, yeeeeeaaaaahhhh?


Random useless fact I recently learned since yesterday while reading about DNA because of this thread:
Red cells or blood plasma doesn't have any dna.

I remember when they cracked the DNA code, it wasn't long ago.
They thought it was going to be even more ground breaking than landing on the moon.
Only to find out that most of it (98%) is "junk DNA".
I bet someone will put this piece of the puzzle to something else and come up with another world changing theory that noone understands :)

The government has a program called CODIS (Combined DNA Index System) and you can download the software and type your autosomal DNA markers into it and see if you have any matches. They give you the closest matches to your DNA markers but it's a list of countries in general, like just "Poland". It's free but the last time I checked you needed Excel software.


That was very big in the U.S. They had the documentary on TV and I seem to remember them offering free tests for men to add them to the project.

it's not cheap


But it's an interesting project, despite all our perceived differences we are all from the same family and place.