GENEALOGY-DNA-L Archives

Archiver > GENEALOGY-DNA > 2001-11 > 1004897907


From: "Nancy Custer" <>
Subject: RE: [DNA] matching site
Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2001 10:18:27 -0800
In-Reply-To: <4.1.20011104090102.034a09e0@wells.org>


Orin,

I think this sounds like a very productive and necessary undertaking. I
have been thinking about something simple if I get a surname study off the
ground (I have to find the surname first. Right now we are doing a little
test to see if our Kelley groups matches a Dorsey group we are said to have
been a part of before some unknown rift occurred.) I am sure that you would
be able to generate a much more effective and efficient site with your
expertise. Having set up a couple of very simple sites with the aid of
FrontPage, I know it would be very time consuming. If you have the time and
are willing to set it up, I would certainly find it interesting and would
happily contribute the results of my study. Our family is all pretty well
educated and not paranoid so I think they'll be happy to be in it. After
all, why do it if you're going to keep the results a secret. My husband is
contemplating starting a worldwide study of his surname, which is of
Orcadian origin and for which there are several unconnected lines in spite
of the small area from which they arose. I am sure there are many others.

May I speak privately about your post about Family Tree DNA. In spite of
being a biologist by training, I am new to the area of using DNA to solve
genealogy problems so you probably know more about this than I do. I spoke
at length with Bennet Greenspan as perhaps you have as well. My impression
is that Family Tree DNA is merely a marketing/processing agent for work that
is done at the University of Arizona as a side to their basic research in
this area. (According to Bennet, convincing them to do this at all was not
an easy sell.) Money from the genealogy project does provide funds for some
extra staff and equipment for the UA lab but their primary focus is
research. My impression is that the markers used are simply a byproduct of
their research objectives, which are not specifically genealogical in
orientation. I have no idea why all the markers are not publicized but
having worked in research labs before, I know it is not common to publicize
everything you're doing while you're doing it. I'm not supporting that and
think it would be good if they would publish it all. However, I am fairly
certain that genealogical pursuits are not their main objective, which may
explain their failure to fill the mold as precisely as we would wish. On
the other hand, as a professional biologist (retired) and a product of
academia, I am happy that the tests are being done at a University facility
rather than I someone's garage.

We are only in the primitive stages of using DNA in an anthropological,
historical, genealogical way and I find it very exciting. It is, of course,
a pretty academic focus and many scientists have more interest in
applications relating to health and genetic engineering. Finding people
with both the training and inclination to apply their education and research
to the field of genealogy may not be the easiest thing. (My own son, a
biochemist who is in graduate school studying neurobiology, gave me a blank
stare when I mention it to him. Of course, this is the kid who once wrote a
very caustic essay about spending his summer vacations visiting cemeteries
while all the other kids were at Disneyland or the beach.)

Going back to your website idea. I say YES, it will be much better as this
thing gets going to have something that is set up by someone who knows what
he is doing. I would like very much to see a searchable database. I
haven't really had time to study this much but I believe there are some
commonalities among the different labs and I thought I had read that there
are some "fudge factors" that can be used to compare them. I wonder if
those could be build into a spreadsheet type of presentation. Here I am
making up things for you to do without offering to help. I can't think what
I could do but if you think of anything, let me know.

Nancy Custer

-----Original Message-----
From: Orin R. Wells [mailto:]
Sent: Sunday, November 04, 2001 9:21 AM
To:
Subject: Re: [DNA] matching site

At 11:30 AM 11/4/01 -0500, wrote:
>A web site could get pretty elaborate if it included genealogical databases
>with dates and locations, which would be desirable in the long run. But in
>the short run, a simple "guestbook" method might be sufficient, allowing
>people to make connections on their own and compare their genealogical
charts.

In the long run I think a guest book type of methodology would probably be
ineffective. Actually, it would be best if the users could enter their DNA
patterns directly on the website which would relieve the overseer of the
website of the task of having to re-enter the data for display. A database
into which the marker information would be entered and then easily searched
for matches would be best. Currently the best we can do is run around to
the different websites we know about or can find to see what we can find
one site/sample at a time.

I own and control a web server which has a database and am a software
engineer with all the necessary Web development tools so I could easily set
something like this up if there was enough interest in doing so. I may
have to do this anyway for the Wells study where we will eventually
possibly have hundreds of samples, all focused on Wells of course.

What I envision is a web page that allows you to search for patterns and
view the relevant information including a contact e-mail address to allow
visitors to contact anyone of interest. This may be the individual or it
may be a project coordinator. Another option would bring up a form into
which you would enter the marker information from your report. I would
include all known sampling DNA Loci being used by the various labs,
possibly organized by lab, and you would enter in the ones you have data
for. The surname, geographical location, an e-mail contact, sample code
number from the laboratory, and the sampling laboratory would be required.
The e-mail contact would be used to confirm that the person had indeed
entered the information to prevent some nut case from shoving a bunch of
junk into the database. In the event one does not have an e-mail address,
a second form could come up and require them to enter contact infomation
that would not be available on the website. This might be important anyway
as people tend to change e-mail addresses so often it is difficult to keep
a database of valid e-mail addresses.

If anyone thinks it would be of general interest to do this, please let me
know. If there is enough interest, I will go ahead and do it. I would be
interested in suggestions on other items to add to the site. I should
think links to existing sites that provide content would be preferrable
over duplicating existing work. I am also willing to work with anyone else
who would like to collaborate on such a project, especially someone who can
do graphics <g>.

Let me hear from you.



Orin R. Wells
Wells Family Research Association
P. O. Box 5427
Kent, Washington 98064-5427
<>
http://www.rootsweb.com/~wellsfam/wfrahome.html
Subscribe to the "Wells-L" list on RootsWeb


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