MyHeritage Buys Promethease

Found on the MyHeritage blog today!

Today we are announcing MyHeritage’s acquisition of SNPedia and Promethease, through acquiring the company that owned and operated them, River Road Bio, expanding our intellectual property in medical genetics. This marks our first consumer health acquisition and our 10th acquisition since MyHeritage’s founding. Promethease will be made free through the end of 2019 and SNPedia will remain a free wiki resource for academic and non-profit use.

Promethease

Promethease.com is a literature retrieval service. It allows consumers to upload their raw DNA data (from services such as Ancestry.com, 23andMe, and others) and automatically compare it to SNPedia to see relevant scientific findings regarding their genome. The Promethease service currently costs $12, and offers consumers the option to store their DNA data. Since its launch in 2008, Promethease has become one of the world’s most popular consumer health services by allowing customers to obtain information based on their unique genetic makeup. Following this announcement, MyHeritage is transforming Promethease into a free service, effective today, and this free promotion will run until the end of 2019. MyHeritage intends to keep Promethease separate from its MyHeritage DNA health product line. Unlike Promethease, MyHeritage does not provide any health reports based on DNA data uploaded from other vendors. All of MyHeritage DNA’s health reports are based on clinical validation of the underlying DNA data.

Find out more, read the full announcement at:

https://blog.myheritage.com/2019/09/myheritage-acquires-promethease-and-snpedia/

Monthly Meeting – Sep 5, 2019 – “The History of the Geography of New York City” by Stephen P Morse

New York City has undergone numerous changes in its geographical boundaries, both for its counties and for is boroughs. An understanding of these boundaries is important in order to know what archive to search in when looking for vital records. The talk discusses the changes to New York City’s geography over the years, and describes the difference between New York City and the City of New York.

Stephen was given the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies in 2006, the APGQ Excellence Award, and the National Genealogical Society – Award of Merit in 2007. It was in recognition of exceptional contributions to the Field of Genealogy. His “One-Step” search tools have assisted genealogists greatly by making it easier to find their ancestors within existing large genealogical databases. He is a computer professional who holds a doctoral degree in electrical engineering. He is best known as the architect of the Intel 8086 which sparked the PC revolution.

Doors open at 6:15 pm, the meeting starts at 7:00 pm. We’ll see you at the Family History Center, 1024 Noche Buena, Seaside, CA., left rear of building.

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“The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” – Thomas Edison

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Monthly Calendar – September 2019

Monterey County Historical Society had a BBQ!

and some of our team were there… this is a real genealogy picture 🙂

DNA Sig Announcement

Barbara Rae-Venter has resigned as facilitator of the MoCoGenSo DNA Special Interest Group (SIG).

The MoCoGenSo DNA SIG was started by Barbara in the spring of 2016 and it has run for three years.  The Sig would not have been possible without her dedication.  We thank her for her service.

The Board of Directors is restructuring the Special Interest Group.  As we are working out the details, we solicit your input.  The date of the next meeting will be determined based on your feedback. 

You can contact MoCoGenSo officers at https://mocogenso.wordpress.com/business/officers/
or talk about it at the next Monthly meeting.

Utah Genealogy Association is having a Virtual Conference

The Utah Genealogy Association is holding a Virtual Conference this September. It will be held September 24-25, 2019. But you know what “virtual” means! The conference is being recorded and made available over the internet. One of the benefits of this virtual conference is unlimited access to the recorded presentations until October 26, 2019–that is a full 30 days to listen again and solidify new concepts. So if you can’t watch “real time”, you can easily watch the sessions later. You could say the conference is being held the whole month of October!

The first day features an exciting evening of DNA presentations from Blaine Bettinger, Kitty Cooper, and Patti Hobbs. Wednesday opens with the keynote address given by Judy Russell, the Legal Genealogist, at 9:00 a.m. MST, followed by a full slate of 5 other expert presentations.

There are fees involved. But the presenters are some of the best in the country in their given fields. They deserve our support and expenses need to be covered! Go to the web site and check it out. It sounds like a great deal to me!

Click here to go to the UGA Virtual Conference web site. While you are there, be sure to look around the Utah Genealogical Association is one of the finest!

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“In the end, it’s not the years in your life, rather it’s the life in your years.” – Abraham Lincoln

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Counting SNPs in a raw data file with Excel

At the DNA Sig meeting in May 2019, I showed an Excel file containing my MyHeritage Raw Data file with a table of quantities of SNPs per Chromosome.  Some people wanted to know how to do the same for their data.  I am finally getting around to telling how.

To do this requires a few steps.

• Download your data file from your provider.
• Uncompress the ZIP file.  Usually the raw file is a CSV file.
• Import the CSV file into Excel
• Delete the first few descriptor lines.
• Put column headings into the file.
• Save the file as an Excel file
• Create a NAME Range over the Chromosome column.  In the snapshot below, I created a NAME called ALLDATA which covered all of my data. Do whatever is easier for you.
• Manually create column F, called CHROM below, which contains just a number for each Chromosome.  You will need 1-22.
• In column G, called COUNT below,, use the COUNTIF function over the NAME Range (ALLDATA) to count the associated value in column F. Copy that formula down through the 22 rows.
• Add a SUM at the bottom of column G to verify totals

It is harder to write this how-to post than it is to do the actual tally.  If you have a spreadsheet program with a COUNTIF function, go ahead, do it for your data.  If you have tested at multiple companies, you could compare totals for each!  Enjoy…