Professor Koebke and the old man of La Chapelle

I sadly have to announce, that Professor Juergen Koebke, former director of the anatomic institute of Cologne, was found yesterday suicided in the south of Cologne, obviously no longer bearing unfair accusations against him and his responsability. Last week it became public, that up to 80 corpses in his institute have not been buried as usual. It was the guilt of a staff member with a lot of private problems. Since Koebke was known as extremely human, he did not want to destroy that member, but it came to an official warning, signed with the designated next professor (who is not reachable anymore).

In 2005 we both organized an exhibition in the big lounge of the anatomic institute and buying the above painting he even enabled the printing of the invitation cards. He was highly educated and interested, was repeatedly in the list of top three beloved teachers and was so generous, that he gave me free access to all parts of a huge collection. For the course of three weeks I was able to have all the original sculls and repliquas in hands to draw them.

This is a real tragedy!

iWulff

aus dem Nachlaß von Steve Jobs:
das rote Präsidententelefon für besondere Anlässe.

POIESIS & TECHNE

Comments about 23andme's new terms of subscription

Repeatedly the question arise, who owns our genome and I think, it is worth a notion, that greek philosophers around 500 bc already developed a rather appropriate distinction about two different powers, how things can be produced. One is named POIESIS and it means the power to let natural things grow and evolute into their own shape. The other is related to human intelligence and means the power to transform given things and to invent something completely new. It is called TECHNE.
Applying this to the field of genetics, we can easliy see, that a "Genome" is undoubtly part of the natural world, is a result of the power of POIESIS and belongs both to all of us and nobody as does the air around us, we can breath. Nobody can claim, it is his creation or invention or propriety. What of course not means, that someone else has the right to put his hands on information about my genome!
On the other hand we have to agree, that all methods of Genome investigation, sequencing and chip technologies, tools like Relative and Ancestry Finder are part of TECHNE and must be regarded as unique inventions, innovations of the several companies, who owns them.
In so far I have to agree to the new terms of subscription, they mostly correspond to what I think about the freedom of a companies business strategy.

The problem is the timing. What seems to be ok for the future, must not be ok for the past!
The current consumers for the V3 technology ordered under different conditions and will be blamed with the new TOS.
I wanted to know, how it will look like, when the new terms are not taken back!

This is the current situation for each participant of Relative Finder. There are distant cousins, tested with the V2 chip, those with V3 and about 3/4 are non responders ( coloured icons! ). I omitted decliners and the chaotic fact, that some accept contact, but decline sharing.

The new TOS will only concern the users of V3 and those unlucky ones, who paid for an update to V3. If they decide to continue paying the subscription fees, they will lose all the non payers of V3.

Who cancels the subscription, will maintain the access to his raw data, but will face a situation, anybody can have for free installing a simple demo account. He will see this:

I deeply recommend to sign a petition, compiled by Larry Vick against the new terms of subscription.

http://www.change.org/petitions/23andme-dont-take-away-our-relative-finder-matches#

Respecting Synthia

since 23andme recently changed almost unnoticed their terms of subscription, most of V3 chip accounts after cancelling will turn into a sort of demo-accounts with only access to their rawdata.
When Jim McMillan put together a virtual person as a reference for a northwesteuropean person and I added a face to that, we both installed a demoaccount at 23andme and I even asked the staff for the possibility to upload Jims data to their database - as usual with no response.
Well, I have the impression, that 23andme is losing their capacity to differenciate between real and virtual people.
Installing a facebook account for Synthia Zaender, as I called her, I used the following text for my invitations:
 
"hi,
I'm Synthia, a synthetic woman, who's genome (about 570000 basepairs) was  compiled by Jim McMillan, using the most common segments,  he could find in the databases of 23andme testees of european descent. According to my snpedia/promethease results, as he could define, I'm light skinned, prone to freckling, lactose tolerant, with type A blood, red or light blond hair, blue eyes, would pick up 4 IQ points if breast feed, and more.
Following this, Hartmut Zänder made my portrait, including my possible mtdna haplogroup H1.

 

You can see my comparisons at:
http://www.box.net/shared/oskds8h9by"

This is, was Synthia ( not the real me! ) got today at her account:

"You really are as fascinating as you think you are.

23andMe in 2011: Helping Customers Tell Their Stories
   
Dear Synthia,
The 23andMe team made great strides this year in our mission to bring the world of genetics to you. Thank you for taking part in the personal genetics revolution, and making this possible. We take inspiration every day from the stories you share about the positive impact of our unique service. Here are the highlights of 2011, including some of the most inspiring of these stories:

New and Updated Content
   
    * Our scientists selected the highest quality information from thousands of research articles to deliver 78 new and updated reports about your health and traits.
    * Along with extensive reports on diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, we delivered “conversational” reports — for example describing how your genes might impact your coffee habit.
    * Our blog The Spittoon kept you current throughout the year on the latest discoveries in genetics and more.
Karen Durrett may have saved her life when she talked to her doctor about her increased genetic risk for breast cancer.
   
New Tools
    * Our improved Relative Finder tool connected more family trees than ever before, with most members seeing more than 250 new relatives.
    * The new Neanderthal Ancestry feature let you explore your caveman roots.
    * You can now team up with your family on your Family Health History to get a more complete picture of your health.
    * New community tools made it easier to share your stories and connect common interests.

Neil Schwartzman used 23andMe's Relative Finder to connect with the sister he never knew he had.
   

New Research and Discoveries
    * Thanks to the contributions of 23andMe members, we published a groundbreaking study on the genetics of Parkinson’s disease.
    * Our Roots into the Future initiative, a revolutionary study exploring the impact of genetics on health in African Americans, enrolled thousands of participants.
    * We continued to support research for rare diseases by launching the myeloproliferative disorders community.
    * We added 15 new Research Discoveries, on topics silly to serious, driven by the participation of people like you.

Jim Wong joined the Parkinson's Community and fought back against his Parkinson’s.
   
23andMe brings the stories in your DNA to life. We can't wait to add exciting new chapters in 2012.

Happy New Year!

The 23andMe Team           
   
Because no one is just like you.

Homo floresiensis

Dienekes today pointed to a new study about the Flores dwarfs:
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2011/11/homo-floresiensis-dramatically-dwarfed.html

I couldn't find a foto about this, so I post a painting, I did 6 years ago:
"Ebu Gogo", Acr/canvas, 112 x 200 cm, 2005

http://zaender.com/malerei/2005/ebugogo.jpg

My personal "Ariernachweis"

The dreams of ethnic or national purity sometimes produce terrible consequences. European arrogance, based both on a vague feeling of racial superiority and a dogmatic interpretation of Christian beliefs led to this disastrous mixture of a theology without a possible argument and a biologistic view without a proof.
After a millennium of rather peaceful coexistence, grounding in roman tolerance towards different populations and religions, the medieval area developed the frameset of a North European anti-Semitism, leading to crusades and first in Spain to a law with the name “limpieza de sangre” at the end of the 15th century, which should exclude all Jews and Maures from high social positions. This pregenetic concept of a purity of blood ( with all its social hierarchy implied ) was still virulent, when the National Socialists in 1933 started to demand a proof for a pure German descent – the Ariernachweis. He caused a hype for genealogy until the end of WW2. It seems perverted, but after all that physical and cultural destruction the Ariernachweis today often is the only source for a genealogical startup. Without those records, collected by my grandfather before his public job as a teacher I would know nearly nothing about my ancestors.
80 years ago no genetic instrument was at hand to determine any Ashkenazi admixture, so mere declaration about the baptisms of the grandparents was mainly demanded. This procedure could lead to absurdities, since any conversion of someone of the Great-Greatparent generation could not be considered. In genetic terms we would call this a mismatch. Today with autosomal comparisons we have better instruments at hand to look for any Ashkenazi connection.
Within the tools of 23andme we can look for several indicators, the total amount of genetic cousins, the occurrence of specific haplogroups, the number of connections with declared Jewish grandparents in Ancestry Finder, the number of relatives in Relative Finder. My results look like this:

Up to a dozen connections in Ancestry Finder is what seems to be usual in German data files, as far as I can see. It is either background noise or the amount of admixture we should expect after such a long time of coexistence. Two Jewish haplogroups in Relative Finder does not look like recent relationship either.
This picture changed, when the results of my mother came in. One generation further back seem to open a new window:

She has less matches in Ancestry Finder, what could mean, that I have possible additional connections on my fathers side, but she encounters a complete different situation in Relative Finder. We have only one Jewish cousin in common ( N1b2 ), but I gathered all available information together about the provenience of her cousins ( some appear in AF too ) and was even able to locate most of her matches in a cluster on chromosome 7. The grandfather of the 26,9 cM match left Volhynia in 1912 and went to Buenos Aires.

The practice of declaring the Ashkenazi background of grandparents looks a bit similar to the above mentioned Ariernachweis, but the goal is a different one, not discrimination, just pure information.

Köln, Oct 2011

 

Mei jrine Kusine 2: A genetic Tsunami?

Again I’m looking for an illustrative explanation concerning the simple fact, that people with an Ashkenazim background have about ten times more genetic cousins than me. The two main reasons, cited in countless forum postings are heading both historical developments and a higher inbreeding ratio. This always sounds logical, but is nevertheless hard to understand. So here it goes with a personal visual approach!
In Cologne we have just started to explore a new excavation site in the old Jewish quarter, built in the 12th century, when the town expanded toward a muddy Rhine arm. They already found fine jewellery, burnt remains of the Bartholomew night and even a big Jewish romance of chivalry, containing a lot of erotic adventures. At that time the members of the Jewish community along the Rhine valley named them self  Ashkenazim.  There are thought to be about 25000 in the cities of Speyer, Worms, Mainz and Köln. Beside their ritual language Hebrew they spoke a German medieval dialect as everyday language.  In the dynamics of the beginning crusades with all its hate propaganda they were pushed by west-European Christian anti-Semitism to leave their homes and move more and more eastwards, enriching their language with Czechish, Polish and Russian idioms, thus developing Yiddish.
There are almost 2000 years of Jewish presence in Europe. In 321 Caesar Diocletian confirmed a declaration from Cologne, demanding, that members of the Jewish community now should have the right to join the city government, what exactly means, that there must have been a considerable amount of Jewish citizens with enough cultural and financial power to compete in a city of about 30.000 people. The soldier camps along the roman LIMES ( including Mainz, Speyer, Worms and other) are exactly the same as mentioned to be Jewish centers later, what makes me believe, they had been here since roman times. Romans lived in the Rhine valley for about 500 years - enough time for Jewish merchants and families to find a way up north.
While the Ashkenazim were forced to emigrate eastward, parts of their Sephardic distant cousins joined them, leaving Spain and Portugal. Later on others became the first to cross the ocean for the Americas. They reached New Amsterdam via Brazil in 1654. This first immigration wave was followed by a German one after 1840, before the main wave started around 1880,  bringing until 1924 more than 2500000 eastern Jews into the US. This seems to be the wave, whose genetic echo we encounter nowadays.
But this alone cannot explain the amount of matches, so I wanted to have a closer look on what is called the “inbreeding ratio”. Traditional genealogy already gave definitions, explaining the simple fact, that our binary ancestor tree (doubling in each generation) would produce an absurd situation, outnumbering the world population after enough generations. The solution for this paradox is called implex or pedigree collapse or Ahnenschwund. It means that further back in time some ancestors must appear in several positions, that there must have been more and more cases of cousin or uncle-niece marriages. I do not want to focus on the different reasons for this phenomenon, but head for its principal genetic implications, which are to illustrate. The usual pedigree tree gives us eight great-grandparents, thus shrinking the genetic partition of each to about 12,5 % of a great-grandson or daughter after three generations.
This is what it looks like in the light of a cousin or uncle-niece marriage. As one can easily see, a cousin marriage reduces the number of great-grandparents to six and produces two generations of same percentage, while marrying an uncle only needs four great-grandparents.