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Archiver > GENEALOGY-DNA > 2002-08 > 1030676456


From: "Orin R. Wells" <>
Subject: Re: [DNA] How Specific is 12 marker test
Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 19:59:24 -0800
References: <5.1.0.14.0.20020828144332.0572e120@mail.verizon.net>
In-Reply-To: <003c01c24fa0$837a30a0$4aad5241@randallscomput>


At 04:10 PM 8/29/02 -0500, Randall Colston wrote:
>John,
>Couldn't brothers have a 10 out of 12 match? Both would have the same odds
>of a one step mutation, but not necessarily the same station. I am not
>trying to be disagreeable. I have been thinking about this for a while, and
>you reminded me.

At 06:03 PM 8/29/02 -0400, John S Walden wrote:
They "could" but the odds on that is small

Not so small maybe. In fact the odds are quite finite.

We have a case in our study with EXACTLY this scenario. We happened to end
up with two brothers, their father and a grandson (son of one of the
brothers) in the study. Each of the brothers has one mutation at a
different locus from his father making them two markers different from each
other. We are missing some of the information on the grandson, so I can
not tell if his father passed on the mutation. We didn't set out to
recruit this mixture, it just happened. BYU is now testing two additional
grandchildren because of a different anomaly that has been identified.

We have a second set of brothers who are absolutely identical. This is why
I made the observation some time back that it appears to me there is
something at work with regard to mutations other than JUST generational
relationships. But what it may be I have no clue. Why do we see two
mutations in one generation of one family and none in 50 birth events in
another? What makes the markers so stable in one instance and instable in
another? We don't yet have other relatives from this family, so we don't
even know what the "baseline" looks like other than to assume it is
everything that didn't mutate in the two brothers and that may be an
invalid assumption. here. Hopefully something will turn up in our UK
collections that are registering now.



Orin R. Wells
Wells Family Research Association
P. O. Box 5427
Kent, Washington 98064-5427
<>
http://www.rootsweb.com/~wellsfam/wfrahome.html
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