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New National Standard for Genetic DNA Reporting

by Karen Dalton Preston

Aug 18, 2009

There was an article today on Eastman's Online Genealogical Newsletter featuring a press release from Sorenson Molecular Genealogy, announcing the adoption of a new reporting standard for Y-DNA. The standard was recently developed by the National Institute of Standards & Technology.

Has FTDNA adopted this standard, too? How might this change the way that Y-DNA test results shown on the FTDNA site? I am hoping that someone from Family Tree DNA can comment.

--Karen Preston
  • up

    Debbie Kennett

    Family Tree DNA have confirmed to ISOGG (the International Society of Genetic Genealogy) that they will adopt the new standard. FTDNA scientists were in fact the ones who were pushing NIST to set common standards. FTDNA have agreed to implement the changes later this year though an exact date has not yet been confirmed. The values for some of the markers will change throughout the entire FTDNA database to conform with the new standard. Given that they have such a large database this is a not inconsiderable task. You can get an idea of the changes which will be necessary from this chart on the SMGF website:

    http://www.smgf.org/ychromosome/marker_standards.jspx

    The changes do not mean that any companies were reporting results incorrectly. It's just that they were all using slightly different counting systems.

    The companies which use the Sorenson lab (Ancestry and DNA Heritage) and Genebase have also confirmed that they will adopt the new standard. A table should be available soon on the ISOGG website.
    1

    Aug 19, 2009