Coming Soon: Y-DNA Haplogroups for Family Finder

[Riverman]

There are some questions if the Y updating of Family Finder has started.

I believe so, although I have no official knowledge.

Some observations.

On  (or about) Dec 1, there were 10,671 men under L48, a major subclade of R-M269.
Today, 12,568.   

My personal FF on (or about) Dec 1 had 1403 men with a Y haplo.  (all types)
Today, 1553

I had 560 FF with R-M269.  Today I have 528, which I interpret as 32 men being updated to a more refined Y haplo.

I guess that's correct, +/- some individuals which will have done BigY or other SNP-related testing in the meantime as well. Like I had a couple of new results in that time frame (beginning of December until now), but nowhere near as much as I got new branch members, even minus the individuals which weren't STR matches and therefore beyond my observation.

[Webb]

I have about 2600 12 Marker matches. You can edit your results to show those kits who have done FF tests. It’s going to include other tests in addition to the FF test, but for me it reduces my matches to 1500 results. I sorted the results newest first, and there are several in the last 6 months who did not do the Y700 test who have results quite a ways below M269. Two are L2 and one is below L21. So did these individuals take a la carte snp tests just after testing FF, or were their predictions the result of the new initiative?

[Mabrams]

I have about 2600 12 Marker matches.  You can edit your results to show those kits who have done FF tests.  It’s going to include other tests in addition to the FF test, but for me it reduces my matches to 1500 results.  I sorted the results newest first, and there are several in the last 6 months who did not do the Y700 test who have results quite a ways below M269.  Two are L2 and one is below L21.  So did these individuals take a la carte snp tests just after testing FF, or were their predictions the result of the new initiative?

IMHO (stress 'O'), most likely FF updates.   I don't think there is a way other than GAPs in their projects.

FTDNA rarely promotes SNP tests anymore and new testers are unlikely to have heard of them.

[Mitchell-Atkins]

I have about 2600 12 Marker matches.  You can edit your results to show those kits who have done FF tests.  It’s going to include other tests in addition to the FF test, but for me it reduces my matches to 1500 results.  I sorted the results newest first, and there are several in the last 6 months who did not do the Y700 test who have results quite a ways below M269.  Two are L2 and one is below L21.  So did these individuals take a la carte snp tests just after testing FF, or were their predictions the result of the new initiative?

I've got 3192 12 marker matches, 1767 have family finder results
So far there is nothing unusual in the number of additions over the last 12 months.
Dec 2023:  4 additions 
Nov 23:  3 additions
Oct 23:  7 additions
Sep 23:  4 additions
Aug 23:  3 additions
Jul 23:  7 additions
Jun 23:  5 additions
May 23:  8 additions
Apr 23:  8 additions
Mar 23:  5 additions
Feb 23:  10 additions
Jan 23:  8 additions

Overall I currently have 7740 family finder matches,
1 is M343
565 are M269 of which 113 are blank (you have to click on the name to see it's positive for M269)
1 L23
2 are L151
8 are P312
5 U152
4 L2
2 Z49
0 Z142
0 Z12222
0 FGC12378
0 FGC12401

Will periodically check to see how these numbers change.

[jdbreazeale]

FTDNA has definitely begun Y predictions from FF data, but they have paused it for the holidays and are set to begin again "in earnest" after the new year. I can't find the original post (on Facebook?), but someone provided a link to a worksheet listing the Y SNPs that are found with the FF test, and I post it here for your reference. I can't say for certain if it is exhaustive, but I can say that, when they start doing transfers, the list will definitely be different because of the different sequencing chips used by other vendors.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1...edit#gid=0

If you are a GAP admin, you can easily check to see if your members have predictions. Just click Reports > Member Reports > Received Lab Results and check the Lab Procedure column for "Prediction" (with no other adjacent procedures for the person). My small project has only one "Prediction" so far, and it is surprisingly good: he is a Y-37 tester with a former high-level haplogroup of I-P37, and now he's 17 "blocks" below at I-FGC7189.

[Riverman]

FTDNA has definitely begun Y predictions from FF data, but they have paused it for the holidays and are set to begin again "in earnest" after the new year.  I can't find it now, but someone posted a link to the a worksheet listing the Y SNPs that are found with the FF test, and I post it here for your reference.  I can't say for certain if it is exhaustive, but I can say that, when they start doing transfers, the list will definitely be different because of the different sequencing chips used by other vendors.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1...edit#gid=0

If you are a GAP admin, you can easily check to see if your members have predictions.  Just click Reports > Member Reports > Received Lab Results and check the Lab Procedure column for "Prediction" (with no other adjacent procedures for the person).  My small project has only one "Prediction" so far, and it is surprisingly good:  he is a Y-37 tester with a former high-level haplogroup of I-P37, and now he's 17 "blocks" below at I-FGC7189.

I wonder whether some people get a higher/lower prediction even if being on the same chip, depending on no calls by chance. I got that impression, because one more upstream and one more downstream position gained additional non-BigY tested individuals in my sphere. But the vast majority of the upstream positioned individuals are highly likely to actually fall in the downstream position if doing a more extensive test. The frequency of such actual upstream testers in the BigY-tested pools is very low.
That led me to the conclusion that the current assignment includes the downstream position SNP, but its being missed in a lot of cases.

Has anybody observed the same pattern of this kind of irregularity? Like more downstream positions being included, but it didn't work for all the testers and many end some layers upstream?

Actually on the way to my end branch, there are three upstream layers covered, and the distribution of the new testers seems to be pretty equal, which points to different end points for each of them, probably depending on individual coverage. The 2nd and 3rd layer are pretty equal in value, because it doesn't really matter since the vast majority of 2 are in 3 anyway. The first layer or anything above does matter though, because it covers a major parallel branch and makes it less specific. 1 to 3 levels above that position makes it almost worthless to me, since we deal with such a high percentage of the total population it gets pretty general.

[jdbreazeale]

FTDNA has definitely begun Y predictions from FF data, but they have paused it for the holidays and are set to begin again "in earnest" after the new year.  I can't find the original post (on Facebook?), but someone provided a link to a worksheet listing the Y SNPs that are found with the FF test, and I post it here for your reference.  I can't say for certain if it is exhaustive, but I can say that, when they start doing transfers, the list will definitely be different because of the different sequencing chips used by other vendors.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1...edit#gid=0

If you are a GAP admin, you can easily check to see if your members have predictions.  Just click Reports > Member Reports > Received Lab Results and check the Lab Procedure column for "Prediction" (with no other adjacent procedures for the person).  My small project has only one "Prediction" so far, and it is surprisingly good:  he is a Y-37 tester with a former high-level haplogroup of I-P37, and now he's 17 "blocks" below at I-FGC7189.

I should also mention that the individual SNPs for which a FF tester is positive are listed in a project's DNA Results page.  Of course, this is no help if you don't know which project(s) they have joined.  The tester I mentioned above is positive for 352 SNPs.

[jdbreazeale]

FTDNA has definitely begun Y predictions from FF data, but they have paused it for the holidays and are set to begin again "in earnest" after the new year.  I can't find the original post (on Facebook?), but someone provided a link to a worksheet listing the Y SNPs that are found with the FF test, and I post it here for your reference.  I can't say for certain if it is exhaustive, but I can say that, when they start doing transfers, the list will definitely be different because of the different sequencing chips used by other vendors.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1...edit#gid=0

If you are a GAP admin, you can easily check to see if your members have predictions.  Just click Reports > Member Reports > Received Lab Results and check the Lab Procedure column for "Prediction" (with no other adjacent procedures for the person).  My small project has only one "Prediction" so far, and it is surprisingly good:  he is a Y-37 tester with a former high-level haplogroup of I-P37, and now he's 17 "blocks" below at I-FGC7189.

I should also mention that the individual SNPs for which a FF tester is positive are listed in a project's DNA Results page.  Of course, this is no help if you don't know which project(s) they have joined.  The tester I mentioned above is positive for 352 SNPs.

Regarding the origins of the the SNP worksheet, here is a link to a re-post by John Templer Harper in the "England GB Groups EIJ" FTDNA project.
https://www.familytreedna.com/social/object/4842891

This info came from Vince in U106 blog.
https://groups.io/g/R1b-U106/message/7704

[ArmandoR1b]

That is because the chips used are either the OmniExpress or the GSA or similar. 

FTDNA and MyHeritage originally had the OmniExpress. FTDNA and MyHeritage went to the GSA chip in March 2019.
23andme v3 and v4 used OmniExpress. 23andme v5 uses GSA since August 2017.
AncestryDNA v2 still uses OmniExpress as far as I can tell.

Although each company can decide to have certain positions of the Y-DNA to not be tested or reported they are still limited by what the chip is capable of and none of the companies placed a high importance of the Y-DNA results. Every single person tested by a specific chip is tested for all of the same positions are reported in everyone's raw data. Due to this the number of positions each chip tested can be seen in the raw data for 23andme, Ancestry and MyHeritage customers.

23andme v3 and v4 OmniExpress tested less than 2185 Y-DNA positions.
23andme v5 tested less than 3397 Y-DNA positions.

AncestryDNA v2 Ominexpress tested less than 1745 positions.

The Myheritage files that I have tested less than 3496 positions. They must be from a 2019 GSA chip.

Based on the above results the reports from the FTDNA GSA chip will have something close to what MyHeritage and 23andme v5 has and the FTDNA Omniexpress will have close to what the 23andme v4 had.

Anyone with transfers from the other companies will get close to what can be seen with Yseq Cladefinder at https://cladefinder.yseq.net/ with the small exceptions of false negatives and false positives hopefully being ignored.

You can see what is reported in the 23andme v5 files at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1...ue&sd=true The 23andme v4 positions that are tested can be seen at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1...ue&sd=true

Let me say that if FTDNA follows through with it then it will be wonderful since people without Y-DNA tests and those with Y-DNA tests that haven't had SNP testing will have their haplogroup and FF and/or Y-DNA matches will be able to see if they at least share a similar haplogroup even if not as detailed as those of us with Big-Y testing would like it to be. For instance, L21 and U152 were tested successfully by both OmniExpress and GSA. So anyone that has Y-DNA STR markers that make them seem to be positive for one of those two but are actually negative for both L21 and U152 are now going to be very possibly DF27. Especially so if tested by GSA and negative for DF99.

I hope that FTDNA reports all positive and negative results so that customers can see what they are negative for apart for what they are positive for.

How would they compare to LivingDNA Y haplogroup results?

LivingDNA also uses the GSA chip so results from them should be very similar to 23andme v5, MyHeritage and Family Finder (once the FF results are final). Since FTDNA are professionals at looking at Y-DNA there will be a few more downstream SNPs not identified by 23andme, MyHeritage and AncestryDNA.

[ArmandoR1b]

Haplogroups start to appear. Just enter the haplogroup name of interest in the search box on the top. Set it to search Y haplogroup.

Just click on match name to see confirmation. At the list its still N/A yet.

Just after quick look, those haplogroups appear to have around 3400 ybp TMRCA, so quite nice.

I posted a spreadsheet of haplogroups that are tested by 23andme v5 which also uses a GSA chip so the FF Y-DNA SNP results will be very similar to 23andme v5. Some of the haplogroups are way younger than 3400 ybp TMRCA. You might want to take a look at it at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1...ue&sd=true

[ArmandoR1b]

On 23andme my haplogroup was R-U152. I had seen relatives which were narrowed down to L2, Z142, L20 etc... but I suppose it's understandable because L2 (and especially those branches of L2) are more common U152 branches than Z56. I suppose this factor influences how "deep" one's "intermediate haplogroup" is.

Z56 was not included in the 23andme v5 GSA test. I truly doubt it was because of how uncommon the haplogroup is. CTS4188 was included and isn't very common. Maybe even less common than Z56.

[ArmandoR1b]

Now I got some assignments among matches and the usual range is about 2000 BC to 800 AD, with a peak between 1.500-1.000 BC for most. So they reach, on average, the newest/best 23andMe level assignments which is fine. I hope that's the trend for all, since so far its only miniscule fraction of my matches which got it.

Of course it is the trend. They both used the GSA chip for autosomal testing. I posted earlier in the thread that everyone should expect results similar to 23andme v5 due to both of them using the GSA chip.

[ArmandoR1b]

I just checked my matches, and one of my 111 marker matches, who did the FF and 111 marker test, has CTS4065 listed as his Y Haplogroup, where previously it was listed as M269.  So it appears that FTDNA is definitely working on haplogroup assignments.  This match is interesting, because his surname cluster is Holland and I match them at 12, 25, and 111 markers.  They are not matches with me at 37, or 67.  I was hoping for better refinement on the tree, as CTS4065 is still pretty high on the snp tree, as I am five snps below CTS4065.

CTS4065 was also included in 23andme v5 and is in the spreadsheet that I posted earlier in the thread. So the result,or similar, was expected for those that are negative for FGC15710/Y8717. FF, 23andme v5, myHeritage, and LivingDNA use the GSA chip which is where the Y-DNA comes for FF.

[ArmandoR1b]

FTDNA has over 2 million in it's database and 285,000 of them are on their y dna haplotree.

For simple math lets say there 2 million are available for this update, of which 1 million are men.

So 3% tested in December 2023, means roughly 30,000 men or ~1145 additional U152 men (above the normal testing growth) should have been identified by now.

U152 #
Feb 13, 2019:  5532 U152 samples in the FTDNA database
Jan 4 2020:  5712 3.6% increase annualized growth
Dec 31 2020:  6385, 11.8% increase over previous year
Jan 2 2022:  7803, 22.2% increase over previous year
Jan 1 2023:  8474, 8.6% increase over previous year.

From Jan 2020 to Jan 23 annual growth averaged 14.2% over the previous year
8474 x 1.142 = 9677 is roughly what we would normally expect

Right now as of Dec 25 2023, there are 10873 men in the FTDNA database, or 1196 more than would be expected based on prior years.  That's a 28.3% increase over the previous year.

If FTDNA has tested 3% of the database then the U152 project numbers are in line with what should be expected based on these numbers (1145 vs 1196 increase).

But what's discouraging to me is that there has been no corresponding dramatic increase in numbers below U152>L2 on my line.

So I'm not sure this update is going to be of much personal benefit.

But I'm glad that it appears to be helping others like Riveman.

Since you are a person that should be able to read my spreadsheet and since FF and 23andme v5 both used the GSA chip I hope you take a look at it at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1...ue&sd=true and compare it to what other subclades are found with FF. They should be similar with some exceptions.

[ArmandoR1b]

FTDNA has definitely begun Y predictions from FF data, but they have paused it for the holidays and are set to begin again "in earnest" after the new year.  I can't find the original post (on Facebook?), but someone provided a link to a worksheet listing the Y SNPs that are found with the FF test, and I post it here for your reference.  I can't say for certain if it is exhaustive, but I can say that, when they start doing transfers, the list will definitely be different because of the different sequencing chips used by other vendors.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1...edit#gid=0

If you are a GAP admin, you can easily check to see if your members have predictions.  Just click Reports > Member Reports > Received Lab Results and check the Lab Procedure column for "Prediction" (with no other adjacent procedures for the person).  My small project has only one "Prediction" so far, and it is surprisingly good:  he is a Y-37 tester with a former high-level haplogroup of I-P37, and now he's 17 "blocks" below at I-FGC7189.

That spreadsheet does show some subclades that are absent from 23andme v5 and I-FGC7189 is one of them. However the some of the other reports such as R-DF13 and so on being reported for FF customers shows that a lot of subclades were not included in the GSA chip used by FF. So there is a going to be a lot of disappointed people that don't get a more recent haplogroup.