GENEALOGY-DNA-L Archives

Archiver > GENEALOGY-DNA > 2007-10 > 1192318128


From: Thomas Krahn <>
Subject: [DNA] Y chromosome map
Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 18:28:48 -0500
References: <723226.59246.qm@web81608.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
In-Reply-To: <723226.59246.qm@web81608.mail.mud.yahoo.com>


Dear genealogists,

During my current work on Y chromosome markers I frequently ran into the
question where exactly those markers are located. The location of the
markers is often the key to understand the recombination mechanisms and
if multiple markers are aligned to the same reference sequence we find
out that markers with different names may in fact be one and the same
location on the Y chromosome.

Looking up marker positions in public databases has been time consuming
and needs a lot of knowledge in molecular biology. For this reason I
have collected information about all kind of Y chromosome markers and
their positions along the current HUGO reference sequence. To make this
all accessible to the public I have arranged the data in a HapMap style
genome browser and we have setup a webserver at Family Tree DNA so that
it can be accessed at a high speed internet connection.

The web address is easy to remember:
http://ymap.ftdna.com

Note that there is no www in the URL!

The browser usage is very simple:
Just type in a marker name into the Landmark or Region field and submit
the Search. Examples: M201, DYS456, or a region like Yq11.221
The browser will show the position of the marker in the Overview graphic
and it will zoom at the propitiate range in the Details view. If you
zoom out a little bit, you will see the markers in the neighboring
region. The marker of interest will be highlighted in yellow so that you
don't loose its position. If you click on the marker it will display
more detailed information and sometimes a link to more external
resources like NCBI or GDB. The numbering of the reference DNA sequence
is exactly synchronized with other ressources like the UCSC genome
browser (Human March 2006 http://genome.ucsc.edu/)

The Y chromosome browser is still under development, so essential
features and markers are still missing, but I thought that it is already
very helpful for the advanced DNA genealogist and I didn't want you to
wait much longer before you can try it. The database already contains
more than 40.000 features and it will be updated frequently. I believe
that some specialist genealogists out there may find errors and missing
features. We intend to make the browser as complete as possible, so
please send all requests to my e-mail address:
. Thanks for your help and have fun exploring the Y chromosome!

Thomas

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