The following is a brief summary of the documentation sent out with the results to each donor by Oxford Ancestors Ltd., of Oxford, who carried out the analysis. The costs of the whole exercise (£660) were funded by The Moxon Family Research Trust.

The following is based on the comprehensive notes issued to each donor by Oxford Ancestors, which run to 11 pages. Additional information has been gleaned from a number of web sites

What is a Y-chromosome?
Chromosomes are packets of DNA contained within the nucleus of the body's cells. Most of them come in pairs, with one of each pair being inherited from the father and the other from the mother. However, the Y-chromosome is the exception. For a start, only males have a Y-chromosome, which they inherit from their fathers. But there is something else unusual about the Y-chromosome. While all the other chromosomes are packed with genes that control the myriad functions of the human body, the Y-chromosome has only one gene of any real importance - the 'sex-determining' gene. This is the gene that makes males male. Incredibly, without it, all human embryos would turn into females and all babies would be girls.

How can the Y-chromosome be used for genealogy?
The Y-chromosome traces an unbroken paternal genealogy back into the past. If two men trace their paternal lines back to a common male ancestor, then they must both have inherited his Y-chromosome. The Y-chromosome traces these connections through time without any need for written records. So two men, or a group of men - perhaps with the same surname - might suspect, having researched the genealogical records, they are related through their paternal lines. By comparing their Y-chromosomes this relationship can be explored.

Do Y-chromosomes follow surnames?
Yes. All the evidence so far is that they do. With his own name, Professor Sykes showed that over half the men in a random sample of present day Mr Sykes' had inherited the same Y -chromosome from their common ancestor, the first Mr Sykes, who lived near the village of Flockton in West Yorkshire, England in the late 13th Century. Other surnames that have been researched also have similar patterns.

Are all Y-chromosomes the same?
Fortunately they are not; otherwise they would be of no use to genealogists. Like all chromosomes, the Y-chromosome is made of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), which changes, very slowly, over time. By choosing for the Y-Line analysis, parts of the Y-chromosome DNA with a known rate of change, we can identify up to half a million different Y-chromosomes.

What is the nature of these changes?
DNA can change in different ways. Think of DNA as a long word made up of chemical letters. The simplest sort of change, or mutation, (from mutate - 'to change' in Latin), is where one DNA letter changes to another. Analysis of this type of mutation forms the basis of our Matriline service. Although Y-chromosomes also change in this way, they don't do so often enough to be useful in genealogy. So we use another kind of DNA mutation to distinguish between different Y-chromosomes. Again, thinking of DNA as a long word, this type of change shows up as repeating blocks of the same letters.

Can you give me an example?
The four chemicals that make up DNA can be abbreviated to the letters A, C, G and T. Imagine a small stretch of DNA with the simple sequence CTG that is repeated over and over again:

-CTG-CTG-CTG-CTG-CTG-CTG-CTG-CTG-CTG-CTG-

On one Y-chromosome, the sequence CTG might be repeated 10 times, as in the example. But on a different Y-chromosome there might only be 9 repeats, while in another there could be 10. By measuring the number of repeats at a number of different locations on the Y-chromosome, we can begin to build up a Y-chromosome signature. We determine the number of repeats at ten different locations to build up the Y-Line signature.
There are, in fact, 22 markers which make up the complete Y-chromosome. Oxford Ancestors select the 10 most significant markers for analysis. The reasons are simple. To analyse more markers would increase the cost, and some of the markers not analysed are more suitable for the determination of paternity cases and for forensic use than for genealogical purposes. Utilising the 10 markers, Oxford Ancestors claim that if two men have the same 10 markers, then there is a 96% probability that they have a Common Paternal Ancestor (CPA - this abbreviation will be used in the text which follows)

Mutations:
Statistically the probability of a mutation occurring in one marker of the Y-chromosome is 2% (or 1 in 50). Thus there is this 2% chance that a son's Y-chromosome could be different to that of his father by a single digit in one marker. Thus on average it would be expected that the Y-chromosome would change by one digit in one marker in 50 generations, or if we were considering two men with a CPA going back 25 generations, then there would be the probability that there would be a single digit difference in one marker between them.

How is the Y-Line certificate read?
The Y-Line certificate (see diagram to the right) consists of three parts:

Part 1. On the left is a ladder with ten sets of coloured rungs. These represent the ten sets of DNA repeats that were analysed to build up a Y-Line signature. To the left of this ladder, in faint lettering, are the scientific names for the ten locations or markers. This is shown so that, should anyone wish to, they can compare one Y -Line signature with other published scientific data. Oxford Ancestors give the actual data, not an encrypted version. The coloured rungs show the range of repeat lengths for each marker that have been found in Y-chromosomes throughout the world. Their size ranges are also shown in faint lettering on either side of the ladder.

Part 2. In the middle is a black ladder with only one rung coloured for each marker. This is a particular Y-chromosome signature, passed down to a male from generation upon generation of his paternal ancestors.

Part 3. On the right are ten boxes containing the number of DNA repeats for each of the ten markers used. Read from top to bottom, this is the Y-Line signature. This digital readout can be used to compare one Y-Line signature with those of others.

Illegitimacy:
We are all used to seeing entries in Parish registers, such as, "James the son of John and Mary baptised --". We assume that James is the legitimate son of John. If Mary had had an affair with a man who was not a "male-line" relative of John, then James Y-Line would be very different from that of John.

 

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