June 16, 2008

EURO-DNA-CALC 1.0 released

Get the newer version 1.1 here.

I have created a version of my classifier for 23andMe/deCODEme genotype data that I talked about before. It calculates the probability that an individual is "Northwestern European", "Southeastern European", or "Ashkenazi Jewish".

You can download it here.

If you use it, feel free to leave a comment or send me an e-mail.

Comments from some users who tried it can also be found in this dna-forums thread (registration required).

(clarification, June 17): This is not an admixture test, but a "guess his/her origin out of these three groups" test, a classifier. Here is a way to look at it: the classifier compares these three events:

How likely is this genotype to be NW European?
How likely is this genotype to be SE European?
How likely is this genotype to be Ashkenazi Jewish?

An admixture test compares the likelihood of all possible events:

How likely is this genotype to be (x% NWE, y% SEE, z% AJ), for all x,y,z>0 such as x+y+z=100

Admixture analysis is a harder task than classification, because it looks at a much bigger realm of possibilities (all x,y,z combinations). That is why people have been getting generally accurate assessment of their main ancestry component from various testing services over the years, but sprinkled with widely varying and often puzzling estimates of minor admixture.

5 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. Dienekes,

    Many thanks. I'm not an expert computer user, but was able to download and install the necessary files on a Windows machine per the guidance you enclosed in Readme.txt.

    My ancestry is half-Scottish and half Austrian, from a Viennese assimilated Jewish family.

    The EuroDNACalc routine returns
    - Northwest European 65.1%
    - Southeast European 32%
    - Ashkenazi Jewish 2.9%

    This is thus not the expected distribution for me, but neither is it out-of-bounds.

    I assume the program correctly judged my Scots hald as NW European, say at 100%. Then my "Viennese Jewish" half is classified as NW 30.2%, SE 64%, and Ashkenazi 5.8%.

    Of course, I don't know that the admixture of my "Viennese Jewish" half is 100% Ashkenazi; it may well be much lower. Or perhaps my Ashkenazi background is being undercounted by EuroDNACalc.

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  3. As I mention in the updated post, this is not an admixture test but a "guess origin" test. Perhaps I will create an admixture test in a future version.

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  4. OK, understood--as an F1 hybrid, I'm a poor candidate for a "guess origin" test. Wish I had Mom's and Dad's DNA to submit!

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