Editorial

The Editorial Board

The time has come to have a Journal of Genetic Genealogy.

Until now, genetic genealogists have had to look to population geneticists and forensic geneticists for information about YSTRs. However the specific lines of inquiry in those fields does not always parallel the interests of genetic genealogists. For example, a population geneticist has no reason to be interested in what STR patterns are signatures of various haplogroups. If they need to know the haplogroup, they simply use the more direct route of typing SNPs. Forensics journals rarely deal with the concept of a haplogroup.

In response to this information vacuum, some very good work has been done inside the genetic genealogy community over the last few years. However, the lack of a journal tailored to our needs has meant that most of that work has ended up scattered among many individual websites on the Internet. A Journal of Genetic Genealogy would provide a central "home" for those results. Also, while we are aware amongst ourselves of who is doing good work, the world outside our little community has no way of sorting out good quality work from questionable work. A peer-reviewed Journal of Genetic Genealogy will set our growing body of knowledge apart.

Genetic genealogists are positioned to make a sizable contribution to the knowledge of YSTRs. For the last 3-4 years we have been "ahead of the curve" in the number of YSTRs in common usage compared to what has been used in either population genetics or forensics studies. Furthermore, genetic genealogy has brought into existence large public YSTR databases that allow studies of the behavior of markers that are new enough that they haven’t made it into genetics or forensics journals yet.

The use of mtDNA in genealogy is still in its infancy. However, with the looming prospect of affordable full genome sequencing just ahead, interest is increasing. We need to see more success stories that involve mtDNA, particularly those that may illustrate new techniques.

The Journal of Genetic Genealogy is dedicated to serving this need. This first issue is presented to the Genetic Genealogy community both for the sharing of the specific articles and for beginning the journey to collect, peer review, publish and share the knowledge of our community.

The Editorial Board of JoGG welcomes you to read, use and share this information. We also challenge you to share your discoveries with the genetic genealogy community through this Journal.