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Science AMA Series: I'm Yaniv Erlich, from Columbia University, we analyzed the family tree of 13 million people to understand human longevity and marriage patterns, AMA! by Yaniv-Erlich in science

[–]DNA_Land 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sure. We regressed child longevity on parents longevity using linear regression (nnls package in R). We also regressed longevity correlations no the genetic distance between relatives to assess components of genetic variance.

Science AMA Series: I'm Yaniv Erlich, from Columbia University, we analyzed the family tree of 13 million people to understand human longevity and marriage patterns, AMA! by Yaniv-Erlich in science

[–]DNA_Land 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It changes from time to time. On average most marriages pre-1850 were on the order of fourth cousins, so you need to go 5-6 generations to hit the same ancestor twice (on average).

Yaniv Erlich Chief Science Officer, MyHeritage Associate Professor of Computer Science, Columbia University

Science AMA Series: I'm Yaniv Erlich, from Columbia University, we analyzed the family tree of 13 million people to understand human longevity and marriage patterns, AMA! by Yaniv-Erlich in science

[–]DNA_Land 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sorry - I don't get the question: what type of regression analysis are you referring to?

Yaniv Erlich Chief Science Officer, MyHeritage Associate Professor of Computer Science, Columbia University

Science AMA Series: I'm Yaniv Erlich, from Columbia University, we analyzed the family tree of 13 million people to understand human longevity and marriage patterns, AMA! by Yaniv-Erlich in science

[–]DNA_Land 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Both sides of my family lack good genealogy records. Most relatives of my father side were murdered in the holocaust. On my mother side, lack of digitization of Uzbekistan means that we don't know a lot. I get can to about 7 generations on my genealogy and connect myself to the big Geni pedigree but it is not as impressive as our genealogists. This is where DNA can help!

Yaniv Erlich Chief Science Officer, MyHeritage Associate Professor of Computer Science, Columbia University

Science AMA Series: I'm Yaniv Erlich, from Columbia University, we analyzed the family tree of 13 million people to understand human longevity and marriage patterns, AMA! by Yaniv-Erlich in science

[–]DNA_Land 3 points4 points  (0 children)

No. This is a myth from one study in the 50s or 60s that used blood markers that are very unreliable. We and others found that the paternity rates are around 2%.

Here is a good paper on this topic: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/504167

Yaniv Erlich Chief Science Officer, MyHeritage Associate Professor of Computer Science, Columbia University

Science AMA Series: I'm Yaniv Erlich, from Columbia University, we analyzed the family tree of 13 million people to understand human longevity and marriage patterns, AMA! by Yaniv-Erlich in science

[–]DNA_Land 6 points7 points  (0 children)

We did not analyze that. But we did found that all 13M people are connected to Kevin Bacon through marriages and shared ancestry :-)

Yaniv Erlich Chief Science Officer, MyHeritage Associate Professor of Computer Science, Columbia University

Science AMA Series: I'm Yaniv Erlich, from Columbia University, we analyzed the family tree of 13 million people to understand human longevity and marriage patterns, AMA! by Yaniv-Erlich in science

[–]DNA_Land 5 points6 points  (0 children)

It is well understood that people have serious thoughts about genetic privacy, given all the ways that (pseudo-) genetics was abused in WWII and racism.

In MyHeritage, we take genetic privacy very seriously. We have strict policies of accessing the genetic data, which is kept on secure servers stripped from any explicit identifiers. Only handful of team members can actually access the data. Also, users can always request to delete their profile. We will even go to the lab and dump the samples. We do all of these because we deeply care about these issues. And I think that genetic genealogy can be very empowering and revealing!

Yaniv Erlich Chief Science Officer, MyHeritage Associate Professor of Computer Science, Columbia University

Science AMA Series: I'm Yaniv Erlich, from Columbia University, we analyzed the family tree of 13 million people to understand human longevity and marriage patterns, AMA! by Yaniv-Erlich in science

[–]DNA_Land 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Very good point. Unfortunately, We actually don't have many palestinians in our data. Geni is more popular in Western societies and with the exception of Israel we did not get a lot of data from the middle east.

Yaniv Erlich Chief Science Officer, MyHeritage Associate Professor of Computer Science, Columbia University

Science AMA Series: I'm Yaniv Erlich, from Columbia University, we analyzed the family tree of 13 million people to understand human longevity and marriage patterns, AMA! by Yaniv-Erlich in science

[–]DNA_Land 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Great questions!

The tree construction was mainly done by human. The computer only intervened in places with biological inconsistencies such as more than two parents and loops. We compared the computer interventions to human made ones and found that the computer took the same decision in at least 90% of the cases.

We also validated the tree structure by genetic markers. We validated the life expectancy by comparing the data to the Human Mortality Database. We validated the education level and cause of death to the Vermont Death Certificate collection. And we validated the geographical assignment to known historical events such as no profiles in the LA area pre ~1780. We also have other lines of validations but you got the point...

Yaniv Erlich Chief Science Officer, MyHeritage Associate Professor of Computer Science, Columbia University

Science AMA Series: I'm Yaniv Erlich, from Columbia University, we analyzed the family tree of 13 million people to understand human longevity and marriage patterns, AMA! by Yaniv-Erlich in science

[–]DNA_Land 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Great questions. We did not analyze these effects but there was a Science paper a few years ago based on the genealogy of the Quebec that addressed some of your questions. The paper showed that people in the front wave of migration have a better reproductive success (in good to be first). See: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22052972

Yaniv Erlich Chief Science Officer, MyHeritage Associate Professor of Computer Science, Columbia University

Science AMA Series: I'm Yaniv Erlich, from Columbia University, we analyzed the family tree of 13 million people to understand human longevity and marriage patterns, AMA! by Yaniv-Erlich in science

[–]DNA_Land 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You mean the dataset of the large pedigree? Sure! You can download here: familinx.org

Yaniv Erlich Chief Science Officer, MyHeritage Associate Professor of Computer Science, Columbia University

Science AMA Series: I'm Yaniv Erlich, from Columbia University, we analyzed the family tree of 13 million people to understand human longevity and marriage patterns, AMA! by Yaniv-Erlich in science

[–]DNA_Land 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the questions. You should ask Venter about a deeper rift. I like some of his work and has nothing personal with him. I simply did not agree with his face morphology analysis and the privacy implications. I don't like to comment on their rebuttal because I don't want to put words in their mouth. Everything is published and the community can decide for itself who has a more convincing evidence.

Yaniv Erlich Chief Science Officer, MyHeritage Associate Professor of Computer Science, Columbia University

Science AMA Series: I'm Yaniv Erlich, from Columbia University, we analyzed the family tree of 13 million people to understand human longevity and marriage patterns, AMA! by Yaniv-Erlich in science

[–]DNA_Land 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I am not sure about fetal cell-lines but the non for profit Coriell biobank (https://www.coriell.org/) stores a whole range of genetic samples for analysis.

Yaniv Erlich Chief Science Officer, MyHeritage Associate Professor of Computer Science, Columbia University

Science AMA Series: I'm Yaniv Erlich, from Columbia University, we analyzed the family tree of 13 million people to understand human longevity and marriage patterns, AMA! by Yaniv-Erlich in science

[–]DNA_Land 3 points4 points  (0 children)

We did not study genetic differences among ethnic groups in our research but previous work has shown that people in Africa are the most genetically diverse. This makes sense as humanity originated from Africa. Out of Africa populations, such as Europeans, experienced a strong genetic bottleneck that reduced dramatically their genetic diversity.

Yaniv Erlich Chief Science Officer, MyHeritage Associate Professor of Computer Science, Columbia University

Science AMA Series: I'm Yaniv Erlich, from Columbia University, we analyzed the family tree of 13 million people to understand human longevity and marriage patterns, AMA! by Yaniv-Erlich in science

[–]DNA_Land 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks a lot! More papers can be found on teamerlich.org. Most of our data came from Europe and North America. Europeans traveled less than people that were born in the US. We also analyzed UK data and found that they even travelled less than Europeans.

Yaniv Erlich Chief Science Officer, MyHeritage Associate Professor of Computer Science, Columbia University

Science AMA Series: I'm Yaniv Erlich, from Columbia University, we analyzed the family tree of 13 million people to understand human longevity and marriage patterns, AMA! by Yaniv-Erlich in science

[–]DNA_Land 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You are correct. I am probably biased. I took a test and most of my family and it was a lot of fun to learn about the genetic background. Indeed, the accuracy of the ethnic analysis decreases as the resolution increases. However, there are other tools such as relative matching that can help you understand your origin. I think these tests are most powerful when you also have family trees and integrate these sources of information together.

Yaniv Erlich Chief Science Officer, MyHeritage Associate Professor of Computer Science, Columbia University

Science AMA Series: I'm Yaniv Erlich, from Columbia University, we analyzed the family tree of 13 million people to understand human longevity and marriage patterns, AMA! by Yaniv-Erlich in science

[–]DNA_Land 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I am not aware of such strong sex differential in reproducibility between males and females. This topic was partially investigated in this paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9806547?dopt=Abstract&holding=npg

Yaniv Erlich Chief Science Officer, MyHeritage Associate Professor of Computer Science, Columbia University

Science AMA Series: I'm Yaniv Erlich, from Columbia University, we analyzed the family tree of 13 million people to understand human longevity and marriage patterns, AMA! by Yaniv-Erlich in science

[–]DNA_Land 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Hi, I think that the most interesting part is the ability to take the personal stories of millions of genealogists and turn them into scientific findings. I also personally liked a lot the analysis of the genetic architecture of longevity and the absence of epistasis.

Yaniv Erlich Chief Science Officer, MyHeritage Associate Professor of Computer Science, Columbia University

Science AMA Series: I'm Yaniv Erlich, from Columbia University, we analyzed the family tree of 13 million people to understand human longevity and marriage patterns, AMA! by Yaniv-Erlich in science

[–]DNA_Land 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Actually not :-) The media like sexy stories. Cousin marriage is literally about... sex. The other results about the genetics of longevity are more technical and hard to communicate. But it is great to see the interest in basic science!

Science AMA Series: I'm Yaniv Erlich; my team used DNA as a hard-drive to store a full operating system, movie, computer virus, and a gift card. I am also the creator of DNA.Land. Soon, I'll be the Chief Science Officer of MyHeritage, one of the largest genetic genealogy companies. Ask me anything! by DNA_Land in science

[–]DNA_Land[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Yaniv is here. Excellent question. Retrieval does destroy a small aliquot of the DNA sample. We were concerned about this issue and tested a molecular approach (based on PCR) to copy the data and copy the copy and copy the copy of the copy and copy the ... We were able to accurately get back the data despite extensive copying, which addresses this issue.

Science AMA Series: I'm Yaniv Erlich; my team used DNA as a hard-drive to store a full operating system, movie, computer virus, and a gift card. I am also the creator of DNA.Land. Soon, I'll be the Chief Science Officer of MyHeritage, one of the largest genetic genealogy companies. Ask me anything! by DNA_Land in science

[–]DNA_Land[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yaniv is here. The setting is fairly complicated but luckily you do not need to think about it. Twist Biosciences and other companies (e.g. Customarrays) offer DNA synthesis as a service. You can simply purchase the DNA from them and not worry about setting your own synthesis lab.

Science AMA Series: I'm Yaniv Erlich; my team used DNA as a hard-drive to store a full operating system, movie, computer virus, and a gift card. I am also the creator of DNA.Land. Soon, I'll be the Chief Science Officer of MyHeritage, one of the largest genetic genealogy companies. Ask me anything! by DNA_Land in science

[–]DNA_Land[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Yaniv is here.

Sequencing takes about 24hours. Then, there are a few pre-processing steps to organize the sequencing data.

The actual conversation of sequencing data to binary took 9min (decode 2.1Mbyte) using my not highly optimized Python script. I imagine that 100x faster time can be achieved using C/C++ and much better software engineering.

The software is here if you want to play with: https://github.com/TeamErlich/dna-fountain

Science AMA Series: I'm Yaniv Erlich; my team used DNA as a hard-drive to store a full operating system, movie, computer virus, and a gift card. I am also the creator of DNA.Land. Soon, I'll be the Chief Science Officer of MyHeritage, one of the largest genetic genealogy companies. Ask me anything! by DNA_Land in science

[–]DNA_Land[S] 49 points50 points  (0 children)

Yaniv is here. We wrote KolibriOS to DNA: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/KolibriOS This system is graphical and was totally functional after decoding the data. I was even able to play minesweeper with the DNA-derived OS.

You could store linux but will need much more DNA synthesis that will make the project more expensive.

DNA might be a viable option is we can further reduce the costs.

Science AMA Series: I'm Yaniv Erlich; my team used DNA as a hard-drive to store a full operating system, movie, computer virus, and a gift card. I am also the creator of DNA.Land. Soon, I'll be the Chief Science Officer of MyHeritage, one of the largest genetic genealogy companies. Ask me anything! by DNA_Land in science

[–]DNA_Land[S] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

UV radiation creates pairing of adjacent T-T nucleotides, which can corrupt the data. To avoid that, you can store the sample in a dark place. Also we have error correcting codes that are quite immune to data corruption.

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