Project Summary
Annual bulletin goes out late October / early November
Check the news page for any current notices

Our publicly available haplogroup work is on our external project website at driscoll.dnagen.org. See Haplogroups. Another page of interest is Driscoll Genes.

 

If you are new to Y DNA testing, see part III of our DNA Testing Q & A. Familiarity with STRs, SNPs, SNP streams, and ISOGG long-form order are recommended.

 

Here at FTDNA, project members can log in and see Y results clusters inside the project and read the annual project bulletin, published around the end of October / early November to coincide with the year-end DNA test sale.

To see project yDNA results:

1. Log in to your FTDNA account. You should see your dashboard.

2. From myProjects (sidebar) click on the project name.

3. Click DNA Results (left sidebar).

4. To better see the contrasts in results, click Y-DNA Colorized Chart.

 

Spreadsheet Columns

The top row of the spreadsheet labels the columns starting with the Kit Number, Paternal Ancestor Name, Country (of Origin), and Haplogroup. Following those pieces of information are the Names of STR Markers in FTDNA reporting order.

Paternal Ancestor Name and Country of Origin. The project depends ENTIRELY ON YOU to enter this information in your account. Please do so! Refer to the FAQ for account setup instructions.

Haplogroup. The column immediately preceding the column starting the STR markers shows the tester's terminal SNP (Haplogroup). If the tester has only completed STR testing without further SNP testing, the value will be shown in red and is an estimate of a parent haplogroup. When the tester has performed additional SNP testing, the value will be more refined and shown in green.

 

Clusters

After the top row, your Y DNA results are organized in clusters.

Before you are done reading this page, make sure you are able to find your kit number on the spreadsheet and the cluster your kit belongs to. Be able to identify your cluster number, the SNP sequence describing your cluster, and any further information in the label.

Cluster Labels

Cluster order is by parent haplogroup, and by ISOGG long form order of SNP subclades. The long forms themselves are not shown.

Your cluster label has a cluster number. The cluster numbers are sequenced to reflect ISOGG long form order. Information from ISOGG is incomplete, so we make our best guesses.

Haplogroup Description

After the cluster number is an SNP stream, with the SNPs separated by ">". This is a flattened, abbreviated representation of what is in FTDNA's Y-DNA haplotree. Because of space limitations, not all SNPs you see in your SNP stream in the haplotree will necessarily be in your cluster label. (If you are considering advanced SNP testing, consider reading parts 4 and 5 of the project DNA tutorial first.)

Without further information, we may try to estimate your terminal SNP by looking at your matches (whether named Driscoll or not) at 67 markers or better. Sometimes terminal SNPs conflict, heading different subclades. In such cases, we'll try to label your group using a parent SNP that we think contains the conflicting child SNPs.

The labels are also designed to be readable vertically. Scan your eye up and down the page and you should see the same parent SNP stacked in a column.

Relatedness label: UNMATCHED, LINEAGE, PEDIGREE, and INSUFFICIENT DATA

After the SNP stream comes a description on how members of the cluster are related. Clusters are categorized as UNMATCHED, LINEAGE, PEDIGREE, and INSUFFICIENT DATA according to how well members match on their STRs and how much testing has been done.

INSUFFICIENT DATA means that insufficient testing has been done to know with reasonable confidence whether testers are related. 12 or 25 markers are usually not sufficient, unless you have a well-documented paper trail showing your relationship to other members of the project.

UNMATCHED members mean they have no project-relevant surname matches within a significant number of markers tested. For detailed explanations of why this occurs, see part III of the DNA tutorial.

PEDIGREE members are grouped with other members sharing the same documented common ancestor and are genetically very close, showing small or no Genetic Distances between them.

LINEAGE members are genetically related, as evidenced by the similarity of their markers and also by sharing certain mutations. They may not be as genetically close as pedigree members. Or they may be very close but lack the documentation to push their research back to a named common ancestor. A LINEAGE could have a PEDIGREE embedded within it.

Many members do not document their earliest known paternal ancestors. Close matches are assumed to be LINEAGE unless their earliest known paternal ancestors are documented and appear to be the same person.

Further Information in the Label

After any relatedness label, there might be further information. Sometimes there is a testing recommendation. Sometimes there might be info about how that cluster is related to another cluster. This will vary greatly and also depends on how much room there is left on the label to provide that information. Remember, the Activity Feed is a great place for asking questions!

STR Values

Refer to our aforementioned DNA testing tutorial, part 3, for examples on interpreting STR data. You can also refer to our page on the set of STR mutation rates the project uses in its expert level analysis for fully participating project members.

Cluster MIN, MAX, and MODE Rows

These rows are calculations of the minimum allele values for the STRs in the cluster; the maximum allele values, and the modal values.