GENEALOGY-DNA-L Archives

Archiver > GENEALOGY-DNA > 2009-08 > 1249655343


From: "Lawrence Mayka" <>
Subject: [DNA] Utility/cost of small, super-slow STRs
Date: Fri, 7 Aug 2009 09:29:03 -0500
In-Reply-To: <4A7C1C7F.6020206@scs.uiuc.edu>


We often hear that small, super-slow STRs have rarely been the subject of
study because they are too slow for genealogical purposes but not slow
enough to be treated as pseudo-SNPs.

But FTDNA's current Advanced price list charges only a fraction per STR of
what it charges per SNP. Does this represent an actual difference in
variable cost? If so, it might well be worthwhile for both FTDNA and its
customers to make greater use of small, super-slow STRs as a substitute for
SNPs. The latter run into "real money" rather quickly and appear, in
practice, to be not much more reliable than slow STRs anyway (due to lab
errors as well as multiple occurrences of an SNP in the phylogenetic tree).

In particular, R1a1 men would be much more likely to order L175 at the STR
price than at the SNP price.

> [mailto:] On Behalf Of Doug McDonald
> I looked at the chromatograms of all three of my unique
> mutations (L168, L175, and L176). This shows that L175 is,
> interestingly, actually an STR, where I am 7 while everybody
> else is 6.

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