Category Archives: Participation

Participation Changes

Posted by on May 16, 2012 2 comments

Now that I have DIY HarappaWorld out, I am changing the participation requirements a little bit with somewhat different requirements for South Asians compared to other regions.

If you have any real ancestry from a South Asian origin, you are eligible to participate. Partial South Asian ancestry is okay. The list of countries of origin I count as South Asian are as follows:

  • Afghanistan
  • Bangladesh
  • Bhutan
  • India
  • Maldives
  • Nepal
  • Pakistan
  • Sri Lanka

Note that 2-3% South Asian from Dr. McDonald's BGA or Dodecad Project does not count as South Asian ancestry.

If you have all four of your grandparents from one of the following countries or regions, you can also send me your data.

  • Burma
  • Tibet
  • Uyghur from Xinjiang, China
  • Tajikistan
  • Kyrgyzstan
  • Kazakhstan
  • Uzbekistan
  • Turkmenistan
  • Iran
  • Turkey
  • Azerbaijan
  • Armenia
  • Georgia
  • North Caucasian Federal District, Russia
  • Iraq
  • Syria
  • Lebanon
  • Jordan

Relatives will only be accepted when they are a better replacement for current participants. For example, replacing a participant by his/her parents or his maternal uncle and paternal aunt gets us two unrelated participants (assuming, of course, that the two sides of the family are not related by blood). Another example could be if a participant is of partial South Asian ancestry and they get replaced by a relative who has more South Asian ancestry.

Everyone else can use DIY HarappaWorld. It's fairly easy to use on both Windows and Linux. The only hard part right now is that you have to install R to standardize your genome file. I might look into creating an executable for that to make it easier.

Finally, please be honest.

Related Reading:

Invisible China: A Journey Through Ethnic Borderlands
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Southeast Asia: A Concise History
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Love Me Turkmenistan

Honesty in Participation

Posted by on February 9, 2012 10 comments

I am pretty lenient when it comes to participation in the Harappa Ancestry Project. I accept almost all comers, even those with no connection to South Asia and neighboring regions.

While I ask about ethnic background, I don't release it publicly unless I have consent from the participant.

I do expect a few things from project participants. One is that they will be honest about the information they share with me.

I see no need for anyone to lie about their ethnicity. It's better just to withhold that information if you are so concerned.

There is also no reason not to tell me if you have a close relative participating since I do accept data from relatives (with the proviso that only unrelated samples can be included in most analyses). It's possible that you might not know that a 1st or 2nd degree relative is already in the project. That's not a problem; knowing a relative is in the project and not telling me is.

Also if you send me genomes that are 95% identical (IBS2: 849,145 SNPs) under different names, I will know. And I will remove you from the project.

UPDATE: 849,145 SNPs being IBS2 (i.e. both alleles the same for the two individuals) is 92.5% of all the common SNPs in their data files. For comparison, my sister and I have an IBS2 percentage of only 76.8%.

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23andme Discount and 198

Posted by on November 28, 2011 1 comment

23andme has a discount just for today, according to Twitter and Facebook:

Happy Cyber Monday From 23andMe! Today only $25 Off Our Personal Genome Service®. Offer ends 12pm PST Click Here: bit.ly/uiuxbY

It says it ends at 12pm PST which is at noonmidnight PST on the US west coast. So you'll have to move fast if you want to get it.

Also, Harappa Ancestry Project is just two submissions away from 200 participants.

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Participation Rate

Posted by on October 11, 2011 2 comments

Just thought I would show you how quickly I was getting data earlier in the year and how it has slowed down now. This shows the number of days it took to get 10 samples.

As you can see, data submission has picked up a little recently.

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23andme $50 Off

Posted by on August 2, 2011 6 comments

I got an email from 23andme for a $50 off coupon. The coupon code is YCM48E. So you can use this coupon code to reduce the price of a 23andme test from $99 to $49.

Here's the email:

Want to prove that your parents are to blame for your sleeping-in gene? Or are you simply curious if your best friend is in fact a distant relative, which may explain your mutual love for jellybeans and basset hounds? 23andMe allows you to compare your DNA with friends and family so that you can make fun and interesting discoveries together.

Get your friends and family on board with this $50 coupon. Share it with as many people as you like, but remember that this coupon expires in 7 days (August 9, 2011).

Have fun!

The 23andMe Team

To use this coupon, visit our online store and add an order to your cart. Click "I have a discount code" and enter the code below.

$50 Off

Coupon code: YCM48E

Share with your friends!

(Valid for new customers only)

Again the coupon code is YCM48E for $50 off till August 9, 2011.

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Harappa Participants Haplogroups

Posted by on July 22, 2011 34 comments

All the ancestry analysis here has been based on the autosomal genome (i.e., the SNPs on chromosomes 1-22) and not on the sex chromosomes X and Y or the mitochondrial DNA. The reason is basically that the autosome provides information about your overall ancestry.

Since the Y chromosome is inherited only from father to son, it is useful for finding out about your paternal line. Similarly, mitochondrial DNA is inherited from mother to child, so that's good for information on the maternal line. Note however that the paternal and maternal lines are not the sum total of your ancestry. In fact, it is quite possible to have very different mtDNA or Y-DNA ancestry compared to your whole genome.

Anyway, many people are interested in paternal (Y-DNA) haplogroups and maternal (mtDNA) haplogroups. AV requested information on the haplogroups of Harappa Project participants and SB created a spreadsheet where project participants can enter their paternal and maternal haplogroups. I am also pulling that information into my Harappa Participants Ethnicity spreadsheet.

If you tested with 23andme, here are the links to their maternal and paternal haplogroup pages.

Now go ahead and enter your information in the haplogroups spreadsheet.

You might also want to take a look at the Harappa Participants Map.

UPDATE: Please be considerate of others' privacy. Only disclose someone else's information (haplogroups, location, or anything else) if you have explicit permission to do so. Thanks!

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150 and 100

Posted by on July 14, 2011 11 comments

The total number of participants has gotten to 150. The Harappa Ancestry Project has been active for a little less than 6 months.

Of these, depending on how you count, we are at about 100 unrelated South Asians.

Sorry for my absence from the comment section and the slow pace of posting. There's a lot of backlog of work and home errands that accumulated during my vacation.

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June Update

Posted by on June 4, 2011 No comments

I have a total of 123 participants in the project right now who have sent me their raw data. Six of those have relatives participating and thus have to be filtered out for most analysis other than individual admixture percentages etc where I divide participants into small groups.

The following groups are represented:

  • South Asian: 90
    • Tamil: 15
    • Punjab: 13
    • Bengal: 9
    • Karnataka: 7
    • Andhra Pradesh: 5
    • Uttar Pradesh: 5
    • Kerala: 5
    • Bihar: 5
    • Gujarati: 4
    • Sindhi: 4
    • Maharashtra: 3
    • Sri Lankan: 3
    • Caribbean Indian: 2
    • Kashmir: 2
    • Romani: 2
    • Goa: 1
    • Rajasthan: 1
    • Baloch: 1
    • Orissa: 1
    • Anglo-Indian: 1
    • Unknown: 1
  • Others: 33
    • Iran: 8
    • Assyrian: 3
    • Kurd: 2
    • Mexican: 2
    • Ashkenazi: 2
    • Northwest European: 2
    • Iraqi Arab: 2
    • Georgian: 1
    • Azeri: 1
    • Kazakh: 1
    • Brazilian: 1
    • Yemen: 1
    • Irish: 1
    • Egypt: 1
    • Gagauz Turk: 1
    • Afro-Belizean: 1
    • Iraqi Mandaean: 1
    • Egyptian/Iraqi Jew: 1
    • French/Madagascar/Indian: 1

Most are 23andme data while 4 are from FTDNA.

We are getting close to 100 South Asian participants.

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Harappa Participants Map

Posted by on May 21, 2011 8 comments

Davidski created a Google map of Eurogenes participants and Reiver suggested something similar would be cool for Harappa Ancestry Project too.

So I have copied the idea and created a google map for Harappa Ancestry Project.


View Harappa Ancestry Project in a larger map

Now participants need to go and add themselves to the map at their ancestral location. Here are the instructions:

  1. Login to your Google account. (If you don't have one, you'll have to create one.)
  2. Click Edit button. Do not edit title or description on the left of the map.
  3. Click on Add Placement marker and drag it to the desired location. Choose the most appropriate location for your ancestry.
  4. Put your project ID in the title for the placemark and your ancestry in the description.
  5. Click Save button.

That's it!

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100!

Posted by on May 3, 2011 13 comments

Yesterday, we got to 100 participants in the Harappa Ancestry Project.

I made the project public on January 17, 2011. So, 100 submissions in 106 days. That's pretty good.

I am surprised at the speed and quantity of submissions. I probably have the largest dataset of South Asians right now.

Keep spreading the word and encouraging everyone to participate.

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The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future
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