McANALLY SURNAME Y-DNA PROJECT- Background

Background

WELCOME TO THE MCANALLY (and variant spellings) DNA PROJECT. 
You may already have genetic connections posted here!  You may also learn "your" migrations before and since the last ice age.

"Y" DNA tests trace the family line of your McAnally surname.  The sample must come from a MALE.
 
Family Finder tests identify all blood ancestors back to 4+ generations.  The sample may be from a Male or Female.

We also serve as a posting site for McAnally mitochondrial tests. Sampes for mtDNA may be from a male or female, but the test only traces maternal lines.


THERE ARE McANALLY FAMILY HISTORIES AT:
McAnally/Jackson Family Home Page:
http://www.familytreemaker.com/users/m/c/a/John-R-Mcanally/index.html

Derek McNelly of Tamms, IL:
http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/m/c/n/Derek-B-Mcnelly/index.html

The "classic" American McAnally appears to be Charles born in 1685, kidnapped to USA at age 7.  There appears to be also distant related lineage arriving in the late seventeenth to the middle eighteenth century. Additionally there are many branches of this surname that can trace their family back to the late 1700 to mid 1800s but cannot connect to those classic linages.





IF YOU WISH TO USE GENEALOGICAL GENETICS TERMINOLOGY--
The Y Chromosome is unique to men. Made of coils upon coils of DNA, it is the only chromosome passed to the next generation without being hopelessly splice-mixed with the mate’s chromosome; hence Male Y chromosome tests are used to trace surname lines.

DNA means DeoxyriboNucleic Acid, an organic chemistry term for a spiral ladder molecule containing our genetic code.

Genetic Code is in the ladder rungs made of complementary coupled pairs of amino acids. When the coupling splits open, the revealed sequence of amino acids is our genetic code.

Amino Acids: Adenine (A) couples with thymine (T). Guanine (G) couples with Cytosine (C). This results in ladder rungs of T-A, A-T, G-C, or C-G. Rarely the wrong amino acid pair is copied into position. This type of mutation is called an SNP.

SNP means Single Nucleotide Polymorphism, being exceedingly rare they are useful in tracing genetic branches of the human tree back 10s of thousands of years ago. SNPs can be tested to discover your Haplogroup.

Haplogroups are people with common long-term history. They sit on a common branch of the human tree.

Haplotype is the term used for any individual’s unique sequence of STR markers, akin to a final twig or leaf on the tree.

STR stands for Short Tandem Repeat. The Y chromosome has a lot of nonsense DNA, including hundreds of places where the code repeats itself as in, GATAGATAGATAGATA etc. About once in 500 generations the number of repeats increases or decreases. This is far more frequent than SNP mutations, making STRs useful in genealogy. DNA tests count and report these repeats at up to 67 different DYS Markers. Testing 67 markers brings the total odds of a mutation in each generation to about 14%.

DYS Marker stands for D-NA of the Y- chromosome in S-hort tandem repeats. Each marker is numerically identified such as DYS 439 so as to know which STRs were counted. The more DYS Marker counts you match to another individual, the higher the probability of a recent common ancestor.

MRCA is the acronym for Most Recent Common Ancestor. TMCRA is Time back to the most common ancestor. Time is given in years or generations.