A Brief Tour of the Project

The Ryan DNA Project has a number of different resources to help you trace your Ryan ancestry. If you are new to the Project, or even if you are an old hand, here is a useful summary of all the wonderful places you can visit and what each of them has to offer you.

But before we even get to the Project resources, the starting place for most people will be their own DNA results page on FamilyTreeDNA and here is my Dad's results page below as an example.

If you click on Matches under Y-DNA, that will show you what matches you have at different levels of comparison. The picture below shows that my Dad has 2 matches at 111 markers. But I could adjust the number of markers compared by clicking on the dropdown list beside the heading "Markers" (indicated by the red arrow) and choose 67 markers or 37 markers, etc. This will allow me to compare my Dad's results with other people within the FTDNA database who have tested to this particular marker level.

In the first column, the heading is Genetic Distance (GD), and my Dad has a GD of 6 and 9 for his two matches. As we are comparing at the 111 marker level, this can be written as 6/111 and 9/111. Genetic Distance refers to how close or how far away your marker values are when compared to another person. A Genetic Distance of zero means that the values for all of the markers are exactly the same - this is called an exact match.

Who qualifies as a match to you? Anyone whose marker values are sufficiently similar that they meet the criteria set by FTDNA to be declared "a match". And here are those criteria:

• a Genetic Distance (GD) of 0 at 12 markers
• a GD of 2 at 25 markers
• a GD of 4 at 37 markers
• a GD of 7 at 67 markers
• and a GD of 10 at 111 markers

The ISOGG Wiki has a very nice summary of Genetic Distance and the criteria for matching.

However, your own webpage only shows you your own matches - it does not show you other people's matches. And it does not show you matches that fall outside of FTDNA's matching criteria but which may still be relevant to you. For that, you need to visit the Ryan DNA Project website.

And the most useful page is probably the Results page because this is where you can compare your results to everyone else in the project. Above is a screenshot of the results page.

Explaining the Columns

Reading from left to right across the table ...

• the first column lists their kit number
• the second column lists the Earliest (Known) Ancestor for each member. This is sometimes referred to as the Most Distant Known Ancestor and is often written as EKA or MDKA.
• the next column records the Haplogroup for each member using both the older "long-form" terminology along with the "terminal SNP" terminology used by FTDNA (a Haplogroup is simply a collection of people with a broadly similar genetic signature)
• and thereafter are the names of each marker and the corresponding values for each project member. Up to 111 markers are displayed.

Explaining the Rows

• The first row contains the headers for the columns. 
• Below that is the "Modal Haplotype" for Haplogroup E. The Modal Haplotype is simply the marker values that occur most frequently within that particular group or Haplogroup.
• Each of the subsequent rows contains the details for an individual member - it's as if the Y chromosomes for all of the members are stacked up on top of each other. This makes it easy to compare the values for each of the DNA markers to see if the members in a group match on a particular marker or have a different value. Any differences are again highlighted by coloured squares.
• When we get down to the first Lineage (Haplogroup I - Lineage I), the first row is the Modal Haplotype for that particular group - Lineage I. You can see that it differs from the Haplogroup I Modal Haplotype (8 rows below it) on a number of markers, indicated by the coloured columns. The colouring of the differences from the Haplogroup I Modal Haplotype helps distinguish the unique patterns for Lineage I.

Another important page on the website is the Patriarchs Page. This is where we post the pedigree of each project member. It potentially helps in the reconstruction of the family tree of the Common Ancestor associated with each Lineage. All members are encouraged to submit their pedigrees for inclusion on this page. Have a look through it - you may discover your own ancestor there!

The other major resources associated with the Project include this blog and the Ryan Genealogy Forum on Facebook. This currently boasts over 300 members and is a great place for socialising with the other members of the project, sharing information, and making new friends.

So do explore the website, this blog, and the Facebook group - there is lots to discover about your Ryan heritage. And come back to this blog often - it will be a repository of knowledge and a log of our ongoing discoveries.

Maurice Gleeson

January 2018