Tag Archives: jewish

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.

Related Reading:

Goa and the Great Mughal
Daughters of Kerala
The Rough Guide to Goa
Baloch: Webster's Timeline History, 1759 - 2007
Knickers in a Twist: A Dictionary of British Slang

April Update

Posted by on May 1, 2011 5 comments

I have a total of 97 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:

  • Tamil: 14
  • Punjab: 10
  • Bengal: 7
  • Iran: 7
  • Karnataka: 6
  • Andhra Pradesh: 4
  • Uttar Pradesh: 4
  • Gujarati: 3
  • Kerala: 3
  • Maharashtra: 3
  • Assyrian: 3
  • Bihar: 2
  • Caribbean Indian: 2
  • Kashmir: 2
  • Sindhi: 2
  • Sri Lankan: 2
  • Iraqi Arab: 2
  • Anglo-Indian: 1
  • Roma: 1
  • Goa: 1
  • Rajasthan: 1
  • Egyptian/Iraqi Jew: 1
  • Baloch: 1
  • Iraqi Kurd: 1
  • Georgian: 1
  • Azeri: 1
  • French/Madagascar/Indian: 1
  • Kazakh: 1
  • Ashkenazi: 1
  • Brazilian: 1
  • Mexican: 1
  • Unknown: 2

Let's try to get to hundred soon.

And yes, I am accepting FTDNA Family Finder (new Illumina chip) now.

Related Reading:

The Creative Destruction of Medicine: How the Digital Revolution Will Create Better Health Care
Muhajirs and the Nation: Bihar in the 1940s
Assyrian Historiography
Kazakh Language: Grammar, Texts, Vocabulary (Kazakh Edition)
Brazil: Five Centuries of Change

Behar Bene Israel

Posted by on April 19, 2011 1 comment

As Razib and I were discussing, the four Bnei Menashe Jewish samples from Behar et al didn't look right since Bnei Menashe are from Mizoram in the northeast of India and thus should be expected to have some East Asian admixture.

When I tried to confirm the admixture/PCA results for Bnei Menashe in the Behar et al paper, I didn't find any mention of the group. Instead, the South Asian Jewish group they mentioned was Bene Israel. According to their admixture and PCA results, Bene Israel looked more like Pakistani populations than their Indian host populations. This is consistent with what my admixture runs show.

So I suspected that the four Bene Israel samples mentioned in the Behar et al paper were accidently labeled as Bnei Menashe in the dataset. I sent an email to the authors and they have confirmed that this was the case.

I have corrected all my spreadsheets so you should see Bene Israel instead of Bnei Menashe now. If you spot Bnei Menashe anywhere, please let me know.

PS. Also, it has been confirmed that three Paniya samples were mislabeled when the data was submitted to the GEO database. They are working on fixing it soon.

UPDATE: Mait Metspalu tells me that the database has been updated with the fixed version of the Behar et al dataset.

Related Reading:

The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart
When You Need a Lift: But Don't Want to Eat Chocolate, Pay a Shrink, or Drink a Bottle of Gin
What Do Jewish People Think about Jesus?: And Other Questions Christians Ask about Jewish Beliefs, Practices, and History
Bene Israel of India (Some Studies)

End of March Update

Posted by on March 27, 2011 10 comments

I have a total of 67 participants in the project right now who have sent me their raw data. This is not counting those who 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:

  • Tamil: 11
  • Punjab: 9
  • Iran: 7
  • Bengal: 5
  • Uttar Pradesh: 4
  • Andhra Pradesh: 3
  • Kerala: 3
  • Gujarati: 3
  • Bihar: 2
  • Karnataka: 2
  • Caribbean Indian: 2
  • Kashmir: 2
  • Sri Lankan: 2
  • Maharashtra: 2
  • Iraqi Arab: 2
  • Anglo-Indian: 1
  • Roma: 1
  • Goa: 1
  • Rajasthan: 1
  • Baloch: 1
  • Sindhi: 1
  • Iraqi Kurd: 1
  • Egyptian/Iraqi Jew: 1

I need to post analyses of Tamils, Bengalis and Punjabis soon.

Related Reading:

Thirty-Three Secrets Arab Men Never Tell American Women: A Dissection of How Muslims Treat Women and Infidels
The Political Economy of Education in India: Teacher Politics in Uttar Pradesh
Essential Andhra Cookbook with Hyderabadi and....
Merchants, Politics and Society in Early Modern India: Bihar: 1733-1820 (Brill's Indological Library, Vol 10)

Another Update

Posted by on March 12, 2011 28 comments

I have a total of 51 participants in the project right now who have sent me their raw data. This is not counting three people who 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:

  • Punjab: 7
  • Iran: 7
  • Tamil: 6
  • Bengal: 5
  • Andhra Pradesh: 2
  • Bihar: 2
  • Karnataka: 2
  • Caribbean Indian: 2
  • Kashmir: 2
  • Uttar Pradesh: 2
  • Sri Lankan: 2
  • Kerala: 2
  • Iraqi Arab: 2
  • Anglo-Indian: 1
  • Roma: 1
  • Goa: 1
  • Rajasthan: 1
  • Baloch: 1
  • Unknown: 1
  • Egyptian/Iraqi Jew: 1
  • Maharashtra: 1

I haven't received data from any new participants for more than a week which is the longest lull since I started Harappa Ancestry Project. So go out there and get people to send me their 23andme raw data.

Also, does anyone know if there are a significant number of South Asians who have done FamilyTreeDNA's Family Finder test? Is there a good overlap of SNPs between their test and 23andme's?

We have enough Punjabis, Iranians, Tamil and Bengalis that they deserve separate analysis posts.

Related Reading:

India Treasures : An Epic Novel of Rajasthan and Northern India through the Ages
Rajasthan Handbook, 4th: Travel Guide to Rajasthan (Footprint - Handbooks)
In the Valley of Mist: Kashmir: One Family In A Changing World
The Tamil Genocide by Sri Lanka: The Global Failure to Protect Tamil Rights Under International Law
Lonely Planet Rajasthan, Delhi and Agra (Regional Travel Guide)

Project Update

Posted by on February 20, 2011 16 comments

I have a total of 42 participants in the project right now who have sent me their raw data. This is not counting two people who 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:

  • Punjab: 7
  • Iran: 6
  • Tamil: 5
  • Andhra Pradesh: 2
  • Bengal: 2
  • Bihar: 2
  • Karnataka: 2
  • Caribbean Indian: 2
  • Kashmir: 2
  • Anglo-Indian: 1
  • Roma: 1
  • Goa: 1
  • Uttar Pradesh: 1
  • Sri Lankan: 1
  • Rajasthan: 1
  • Kerala: 1
  • Baloch: 1
  • Unknown: 1

The unknown is Manu Sporny who has put his genetic data in the public domain and I have drafted him into our project.

In addition, out of curiosity, I have accepted data from the following:

  • Iraqi Arab: 2
  • Egyptian/Iraqi Jew: 1

I know a bunch of you have done a lot to make this project known and gotten people to submit their data. But we really do need more participants of every ethnicity and geographic region in and around South Asia. So keep on!

I am working on K=12 admixture runs for the batches we have already done. In addition, the reference I dataset will be used for even higher values of K admixture components to see where the limit is.

Also, I am looking into doing chromosome by chromosome admixture (and other analysis). I have done some experimental runs and once I have pored over that data, I'll have something to report.

As we have seen, even with the removal of the San and Pygmy, the Africans take up 3 ancestral components and most South Asians (excepting me of course) do not have any African admixture. So I am working on a reference dataset without any Africans. I have my own take on how to do that which I'll share in the next few days.

In short, my home computer is running admixture, plink, eigensoft, etc. 24x7.

Related Reading:

Buddhism in Karnataka
THE ANGLO-INDIAN SNACK BOX (BRIDGET'S ANGLO-INDIAN RECIPE BOOKS)
Baloch: Webster's Timeline History, 1759 - 2007
Frommer's Caribbean Ports of Call (Frommer's Complete Guides)
Learn Tamil in a Month

Behar et al Data

Posted by on January 28, 2011 15 comments

In their paper "The genome-wide structure of the Jewish people", Behar et al analyzed the genomes of some Jewish groups. More important than the Jewish samples (which include two South Asian Jewish groups) for us are the different South Asian, Middle Eastern, and European groups they sampled:

Ethnic group Count
Saudis 20
Jordanians 20
Georgians 20
Turks 19
Iranians 19
Hungarians 19
Ethiopians 19
Armenians 19
Lezgins 18
Chuvashs 17
Syrians 16
Romanians 16
Uzbeks 15
Spaniards 12
Egyptians 12
Cypriots 12
Moroccans 10
Lithuanians 10
North Kannadi 9
Belorussian 9
Yemenese 8
Lebanese 7
Sakilli 4
Paniya 4
Cochin Jews 4
Bene Israel 4
Samaritians 2
Russian 2
Malayan 2

Of the 466 samples, I excluded 8 because they were either duplicates or too similar in their genomes to others.

The series matrix files that I downloaded were in a somewhat different format. To convert them to Plink format, I had to look up the platform file for the Illumina genotyping BeadChip they used. Also, Illumina used an A/B alleles and Top/Bot strands system instead of the regular ACGT alleles and forward/reverse strands. This Illumina Technote explained it and I found a Perl script to convert between the two.

Related Reading:

Iruttile Kannadi
Organizing the Revolution: Selections From Augustin Cochin
A history of mediaeval Jewish philosophy
Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon (Nation Books)