The Discovery of S676
The M222 Tree

The story of the discovery of the DNA SNP named S676 began in 2014 and it included both large organizations and individual researchers. After the discovery of the STR pattern which became known as the Northwest Irish cluster (denoted R1b1c7), Dr. David Wilson identified the SNP called M222 as the one associated with it and so, M222 became the term used to identify the very many men in the NWI cluster up until 2014. The many STR kits which match the NWI pattern could not be reliably separated by the STR tools available at the time.

The image to the left is the current M222 Tree provided by Dave Vance through his JDV Site

In early 2014, Dr. Jim Wilson and Scotland's DNA released Y-SNP Positions for the Chromo2 test which was the first large public SNP (as opposed to STR) test. The old R1b1c7 Project on Rootsweb was anticipating these results to break the bottleneck of M222. (Note that R1b1c7 was the STR name for what became the M222 SNP.) Massive amounts of data came in under what was later seen to be the very large Donegal trees under S568 and S658 (see the image left). So, almost all of the R1b1c7 Project group were very pleased to have new data to work with and build their new subtrees, but many of us were not so lucky. As we reported our negative results. David Wilson asked each of us in turn if we were positive for S7030 which seemed unimportant at the time. As we reported that we were S7030+, David was joined by Iain Kennedy who drove much of the subsequent testing to build FGC4077 and its subtrees including S676.

Thomas Krahn used to be a main scientist for FTDNA who had left to start a smaller company called YSEQ along with his wife Astrid which specialized in single SNP tests. This is just what Iain and David needed for their research into our, as yet undiscovered tree. Thomas and Astrid named the largest subtree of FGC4077 as A725 to which the Hoys belong.

You can view the current FGC4077 Tree provided by Dave Vance through his SAPP process here.

Hoy FGC Test

Iain had taken a comprehensive test from the Full Genome Corporation which gave its acronym FGC, to very many SNPs. He worked through his positives with the help of a group of YSEQ testers for the individual SNPs that Iain suggested. Eventually he came up with three equivalent SNPs which we call by the FGC4077 name and our branch of M222 now had a start. We found that Iain and David were on a different branch of FGC4077 from the Easton Hoy testers, so one of them took the comprehensive test from the Full Genome Corporation which let us build out branch.

The image to the right is of the results of the Hoy FGC test.

Before this though, David had noticed that there were three named SNPs (most are still just known by their position on the chromosome - for example, M222 is 15034373), in my Chromo2 results and no other kit had any of these. These were S676, S682, and S679. David predicted that they would be very important for our branch, and he was right. The 'S' prefix denoted Jim Wilson's Scotland's DNA group, but the question arose as to why Jim gave these three SNPs names when I was the only one who had these three. The answer was that Jim wanted to seed his results with reference samples to which to compare them, and he used public genome projects which were mostly health related. One that he used the Public Genome Project and four of its kits were related our line through M222 and one kit PGP43 was related down to S679.

These are the names of the labs who named the SNPs

We see that FGC gave consecutive names of FGC37608 through FGC37624 for these SNPs found in the Hoy kit. They noted that PGP43 or NA21090 had the first four as well as us, so these were declared public and the rest private to the Hoy kit.

When FTDNA began major SNP testing with their BigY series, they took over the market from FGC, although YSEQ has its niche small set of tests (see the link below for our line test). With their new data, FTDNA sees that as of Jan 31, 2023, S676, S682, FGC37610, and FGC37611 are not separated, but that FGC37618 now forms its own tree which we (black outline) and 2 other kits belong. Note that PGP43 is negative (-) for this and belongs in S679 as does that kit on the second to the right.

FTDNA only lists kits which have purchased their own BigY700 tests in their results, so the Dave Vance SAPP process is of great importance in building the A725 Tree

This link is to the YSEQ DF49 panel which is mostly M222. The graphic shows the size of the Donegal trees.

This link is to the SAPP generated FGC4077 Tree.

This is an image of the FTDNA BigY testers in S676. The Hoy kit is outlined in black.

BigY S676 kits