FDA give 23andme 15 days to get into compliance or present a plan to do s

Today's big news is the FDA warning letter to 23andme giving them 15 days to either get into compliance or present a plan for compliance or cease selling the 23andme test as a "medical device" under (b)(4) of the regulations. See this link for the letter:
Warning Letter.

Earlier letters can be found by searching the site at this link: http://www.fda.gov/ICECI/EnforcementActions/WarningLetters/default.htm.

Big Y DNA test announced by FTDNA

FTDNA's David Mittelman has announced the Big Y DNA test at the FTDNA Surname Administrators Conference. The test will return results on 10,000,000 base-pairs and approximately 25,000 SNPs on the Y chromosome. It is being offered to current customers for $495, a $200 discount price for a limited time. Log into you FTDNA home page to see the offer.

New article on the genetic origins of Ashkenazi female lines

ARTICLE Received 11 Jul 2013 | Accepted 4 Sep 2013 | Published 8 Oct 2013

A substantial prehistoric European ancestry amongst Ashkenazi maternal lineages

Marta D. Costa [1,2,*], Joana B. Pereira[1,2,*], Maria Pala [3], Vero´nica Fernandes [1,2], Anna Olivieri [4], Alessandro Achilli [5], Ugo A. Perego [4,6], Sergei Rychkov [7], Oksana Naumova[7], Jirˇi Hatina[8], Scott R. Woodward [6,9], Ken Khong Eng [1,10],
Vincent Macaulay [11], Martin Carr [3], Pedro Soares [2], Luı´sa Pereira [2,12] & Martin B. Richards [1,3]

The origins of Ashkenazi Jews remain highly controversial. Like Judaism, mitochondrial DNA
is passed along the maternal line. Its variation in the Ashkenazim is highly
distinctive, with four major and numerous minor founders. However, due to their rarity in the
general population, these founders have been difficult to trace to a source. Here we show that
all four major founders, ~40% of Ashkenazi mtDNA variation, have ancestry in prehistoric
Europe, rather than the Near East or Caucasus. Furthermore, most of the remaining minor
founders share a similar deep European ancestry. Thus the great majority of Ashkenazi
maternal lineages were not brought from the Levant, as commonly supposed, nor recruited in
the Caucasus, as sometimes suggested, but assimilated within Europe. These results point to
a significant role for the conversion of women in the formation of Ashkenazi communities,
and provide the foundation for a detailed reconstruction of Ashkenazi genealogical history.

1. Institute of Integrative and Comparative Biology, Faculty of Biological Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK.
   
2. IPATIMUP (Instituto de Patologia e
   Imunologia Molecular da Universidade do Porto), Porto 4200-465, Portugal.
   
3. School of Applied Sciences, University of Huddersfield, Queensgate,
   Huddersfield HD1 3DH, UK.
   
4. Dipartimento di Biologia e Biotecnologie, Universita` di Pavia, Pavia 27100, Italy.
   
5. Dipartimento di Chimica, Biologia e
   Biotecnologie, Universita` di Perugia, Perugia 06123, Italy.
   
6. Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation, Salt Lake City, Utah 84115, USA.
   
7. Vavilov Institute of
   General Genetics, Moscow 119991, Russia.
   
8. Charles University, Medical Faculty in Pilsen, Institute of Biology, CZ-301 66 Pilsen, Czech Republic.
   
9. Ancestry,Provo, Utah 84604, USA.
   
10. Centre for Global Archaeological Research, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 11800 USM Penang, Malaysia.
    
11. School of Mathematics
    and Statistics, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK.
    
12. Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade do Porto, Porto 4200-319, Portugal.
    

• These authors contributed equally to this work. Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to M.B.R. (email: m.b.richards@hud.ac.uk).
  

One man's takeaways from his 23andme test: My Mutant Powers: What A DNA Test Can Tell You About Yourself

One man's takeaways from his 23andme test:

My Mutant Powers: What a DNA test can tell you about Yourself
By Eric Barker:

I’m probably going to live longer than you are.

I can’t be sure, of course, but I have two genes associated with exceptional longevity, so all other things being equal, well, I’d take those odds in Vegas.

I have two working copies of ACTN3 in my muscle fibers, which is associated with elite athletic performance and means my body is optimized for power sports like sprinting and weight lifting.

I also lack a functional FUT2 gene, so I’m immune to stomach flu. (If this is my mutant power, I am the lamest of the X-Men.)

As part of the GG genotype, I don’t have congenital problems learning from my errors, due to how my dopamine signaling system works. Hopefully that’s a benefit to the blog.

Read more: http://www.bakadesuyo.com/#ixzz2eh5YYTJc

A chart of my close genetic relations at 23andme

Here is a chart using My Results-Ancestry Tools-Family Inheritance: Advanced from 23andme. This displays the places on my chromosomes where my two 1st cousins and a 3rd cousin match me. Note that there are significant parts of the chromosomes with no match.

First cousins should share 12.5% and a third cousin should share 3.125% of their genomes. I share 17.9%, 15.9%, and 3.05% respectively. I am related on both my paternal and maternal lines with the first 1st cousin and the 3rd cousin. The second 1st cousin is related only through my maternal line.

Survey on genetic genealogy DNA testing at New England Historic Genealogical Society

This weeks NEHGS newsletter, The Weekly Genealogist has a survey on the types of genetic genealogy testing you have done. The link to the survey is on this web page:

http://www.americanancestors.org/wg-vol-16-no-34/

Be sure to access before Wednesday, 28 August.

Genetic Genealogy Ireland 2013

p>Dear List Members

This may be of interest to you, your collaborators, and your fellow genealogists. Ireland is to have its first genetic genealogy conference! Genetic Genealogy Ireland 2013 is a 3-day series of lectures and presentations and is scheduled to run at Back to Our Past (BTOP) at the RDS (Royal Dublin Society) in Ballsbridge, Dublin from Oct 18-20. BTOP is the Irish equivalent of the Who Do You Think You Are event in London.

This is the third year of the Back to Our Past exhibition which last year attracted 20,000 visitors and over 250 exhibitors. This year FamilyTreeDNA have decided to have a stand at the exhibition and will be offering DNA testing at discounted prices. This is the first time that DNA testing will be offered directly to the Irish public at the exhibition.

FamilyTreeDNA have also offered to sponsor a series of lectures in a similar way to how they sponsor lectures at Who Do You Think You Are in London. These lectures are being organised under the auspices of ISOGG and details will be published on the dedicated Genetic Genealogy Ireland 2013 website. Several confirmed speakers already have their profiles on the website and more will be added in time. Speakers come from a broad range of disciplines and include professional genealogists, geneticists, scientists, historians, and DNA Project Administrators. The diversity of topics will include many of particular interest to the Irish public, and indeed anyone with Irish ancestors, such as DNA projects related to the Irish Clans and individual Irish surnames.

So if you happen to find yourself in Dublin in October, come along to this exciting event! Entrance to the entire exhibition and conference only costs 5 euro (£4 pounds, $7 dollars) if booked in advance online.

Please feel free to forward this to other Mailing Lists or anyone else who might be interested.

Warm regards

Maurice

Dr Maurice Gleeson MB

Genetic Genealogy Ireland 2013
Member, International Society of Genetic Genealogy

FTDNA: Sizzling Summer Sale [includes Family Finder at $99.00]

FTDNA.com        Contact Us   Sizzling Summer Salehttp://www.familytreedna.com/   Dear Project Administrator,   Summer is once again upon us and it is time for our Sizzling Summer event! Our successful summers over the last two years have led us to offer you great values again this year. So, let's work together to grow your projects and to grow our database. We have been working with Illumina to offer our Family Finder autosomal test for only $99 during our summer event. In fact, if we receive enough orders at $99, Illumina may be able to help us keep it at this extremely low of rate of $99! As you take advantage of our summer event, remember that the permanency of the $99 Family Finder test is actually in your hands!   Beginning on Thursday, June 27, 2013 and running until Friday, July 26, 2013, we will offer the following:   Family Finder was $289 Now $99 mtDNA Full Sequence was $289 Now $189 Y-DNA37 was $169 Now $129 Y-DNA67 was $268 Now $208 Y-DNA111 was $359 Now $308 Family Finder + Y-DNA37 was $368 Now $228 Family Finder + Y-DNA67 was $467 Now $307 Family Finder + mtDNAFullSequence was $398 Now $288 Comprehensive Genome (Y-DNA67, FMS & FF) was $666 Now $496   REMEMBER: ALL ORDERS MUST BE PLACED AND PAID FOR BY 11:59pm CST, JULY 26, 2013, TO RECEIVE THESE SPECIAL PRICES.

More Products  FamilyFinder  Y-DNA  mtDNA Support F.A.Q. Testimonials Projects Contact Us  +1 713-868-1438 (main) +1 832-201-7147 (fax) corporate@familytreedna.com  -

A guest post Book Review : Creation, the Origin of Life - Creation, the Future of Life

A Guest Post from Walter J Freeman:

Every now and again, I stumble across a book, an article, or some other source of information that brings together various disparate bits of knowledge I have collected over the years. The book I am about to tell you about was, for me, just such a experience.

I read and own the book as the UK edition

which is a flip book, with one side opening on Creation, the Origin of Life, and the flip side opening on Creation, the Future of Life. The physical layout of the book (my early print version, at least) is both interesting and unusual for a book today in that it is actually divided into two short monographs which are both featured as flip side front covers. That is the reader can select the monograph on the origins of life, or flip the book and select the monograph on the future of life.

The books have a reference and bibliographic section following the text for each. Rutherford has made good use of footnotes throughout the text to explain, expand, or to provide short backstories on salient points. This helps to keep unnecessary detail from the main prose lines, and at the same time helps to explain or clarify many crucial points.

The book is due out in mid-June as a U.S. edition and slightly retitled

Creation: How Science is Reinventing Life Itself. (I am not fond of this U.S. rewrite of the title as I think much is lost in the translation from the two previous subtitles.)

This particular book was recommended to me by a friend and former coworker, Dr. Sanh Le. I thank him for calling it to my attention, and I highly, highly recommend it to anyone who has an interest in this direction or who has ever wondered about some of the considerations of the earliest of evolutionary biology.

For about the past ten years, I have been interested in genetic testing for genealogy. Naturally in my travels and general reading about DNA, I have wondered from time to time, just how did all of this marvelous, intricate, extraordinarily complex, cellular machinery found in a cell come to be? I somehow missed ever having taken a formal course in biology. But I did have one course in biochemistry, once upon a time, back when the Earth and the dirt on it was young. I have long sought to make up that gap in my knowledge with general, but unstructured reading in areas of interest to me such as physiology, molecular biology, and related areas.

Dr. Adam Rutherford, a geneticist, a BBC Four TV personality (The Cell), an editor for the science journal Nature, and a writer for The Guardian newspaper,

does a terrific job in pulling together fundamental questions on the origins of life. Moreover he does so in a non-technical way as he presents various views of possible answers to those questions.

If one is somewhat familiar with DNA, RNA, cell biology and other aspects of molecular biology as well as of chemistry and what is known of the Earth's origins, then there is likely to be relatively little new information here. What is new is the perspective and overview that Rutherford manages to pull together on the understandings surrounding this rather large body of knowledge.

The book avoids any illustrations and offers only word images and descriptions, thus does not not get bogged down in details or chemical structures, which unfortunately is a turn-off for some readers. Personally, I feel that some carefully chosen illustrations would have helped, but do not consider the lack of them a serious flaw. This book, then, is not a text book nor a primer on any of the topics covered, but rather a view from a height suitable for the general lay reader. In this, the book is unique in my experience.

Rutherford in the Origin of Life takes you on a journey to examine in light of all of the advances and understandings to date of DNA and the genome, what the first life on this planet may have looked like. Of course, we cannot know for sure what that first, oh so primitive form or forms, may have been, as such a fragile structure does not leave a fossil record. Or does it?

While it is highly unlikely that a fossil could ever be discovered, there are quite a few things that are known about ALL life as we know it. Rutherford pulls these observations together for the lay reader to make a convincing case of some of the salient features of the earliest life forms.

First, ALL known forms of life, without exception, involve cells.

• All 20 amino acids, the building blocks of the functional proteins that make up the machinery of cells, are chiral in the same left handed sense.
  
• All life forms utilize these same small list of amino acids, though myriad of other molecular structures are possible.
  
• All DNA and RNA involve the same deoxyribose structures to build the sides of the DNA/RNA ladder.
  
• ALL nucleic acid "rungs" which encode information are created from the same four nucleic acids, abbreviated here as A, T, C, and G and for RNA as A, T, C, and U.
  
• All DNA double helices are right handed helices in terms of the direction of the spiral.
  
• And on and on and on...WITHOUT EXCEPTION.
  

Taken together these facts point to a single point of origin since all life forms subsequently whether bacteria, fungi, plants, or animals including reptiles, birds, fish, lions, tigers, or humans all have the same basic molecular biology at the most common levels. To be sure there is great diversity amongst life forms, but when one drills down to the molecular biology and biochemistry, we all have or share a common set of chemical building blocks alike in every respect. Scientists and evolutionary biologists use these known facts and more, then, to build a picture of what the earliest life forms must have looked like some four billion years ago +-/ on this planet when it was still a hostile, energetic, and most violent place.

 The second half of this book is a short monograph on the future of life. We stand at the beginnings of what may well become known as the age of the genome and/or the age of biotechnology with advances occurring at what approaches an exponential rate. That there could be other renditions and substitutions at the molecular level to create new forms of DNA and other basic molecules is the purvey of what is called, for the moment, synthetic biology.

 I am not talking about cloning here, but rather designed molecules that have no counterpart in nature, but which can be tailored to have certain functions at the cellular level. Owing to the use of nonnatural, designed molecules in the cell, then further reproduction is shut down because no natural cell has the machinery to duplicate them and thus perpetuate a new form of life.

 Again Rutherford pulls together the diverse threads of what is happening in this nascent field to generate a picture of both optimism and comfort that such efforts, which are carefully guarded by the very people doing this work who recognize their responsibilities, are being made to be fail safe so as to only bring benefit and not cause catastrophe to future generations.

Rutherford points out several times that the cell is a fantastically complex piece of biologic machinery and science is many, many decades away, if ever, from being able to create artificial life based on cellular processes.

 If you are up for a bit of video drama, check out the Hidden Life of the Cell. This BBC produced animation gives some idea of the complexity of a cell -- any cell -- not just human cells as portrayed here. It is sort of a science fiction-like story of an invader, an adenovirus, [pictured as an invading cohort of tiny black "death stars"] out to take over a cell in order to reproduce itself.

Well done, this video is a bit longish at 57 minutes, but it does help to acquaint by means of its powerful story and drama, what is undoubtedly going on inside you at some level at multiple sites within your body at this very moment. Oh yes, viruses are not glistening, black entities, the mitochondria do not glow, and neither does the cell nucleus. And there is no dramatic music accompanying the epic struggles (or if there is music, then it is very, very quiet.)

If this glimpse sort of leaves you in awe, then terrific, because this is NOT science fiction, but rather it is science fact. It is quite real and very, very, very, very well substantiated by decades of data and consistent findings.

But this Hidden Life of the Cell begs the question, so how did all of this marvelous, fantastic sack of molecular machinery and DNA coded instructions begin? Well, that is the point of Rutherford's excellent book, in which he examines this question in easy to understand detail and then looks to the future of where we are now and where our understanding is likely to lead.

This was a Guest Post from Walter J Freemen. Let us know if you liked it.

FTDNA Y-DNA UPGRADE Sale for Father's Day

Dear Project Administrator,

Since last summer's upgrade sale was such huge success, we thought we'd repeat history! Project Administrators like you played a very important role in last year's success by broadcasting the sale to project members. As your project members upgrade, the resolution of results and comparisons we provide greatly improves. So, please spread the word and we'll make this year's upgrade sale even bigger!

From June 12, 2013 through June 19, 2013, we will reduce the following prices.

Y-DNA 12 to 25 was $49 Now $35
Y-DNA 12 to 37 was $99 Now $69
Y-DNA 12 to 67 was $189 Now $148
Y-DNA 25 to 37 was $49 Now $35
Y-DNA 25 to 67 was $148 Now $114
Y-DNA 25 to 111 was $249 Now $224
Y-DNA 37 to 67 was $99 Now $79
Y-DNA 37 to 111 was $220 Now $188
Y-DNA 67 to 111 was $129 Now $109

To order an upgrade at these special prices your members can log into their personal pages with their kit number and password. Click on the "Order Upgrade" button located on the right side of the menu bar. Then click on the "Special Offers" button.

ALL ORDERS MUST BE PLACED AND PAID FOR BY 11:59pm, JUNE 19, 2013, TO RECEIVE THE SALE PRICE.


Contact Us
+1 713-868-1438
+1 832-201-7147 (sales)
corporate@familytreedna.com

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