A CASE STUDY DR.

FRUDAKIS FAMILY
Dr. Frudakis is our Companys CEO, and one of the first ANCESTRYbyDNA tests we
performed were of his immediate family. The reason we did this is that he knew he was
mostly European, but his wife is Mexican and so if the test is accurate, their three
children should therefore plot somewhere between him and his wife.
Dr. Frudakis.
Three of Dr. Frudakis grandparents on the fathers side of the family are all
Greek/European, but one was almost pure Cherokee. All four of his grandparents on his
mothers side were European mix. His plot appears below:

By drawing lines from the vertices that bisect the triangle edge opposite that vertex,
where the vertex represents 100% and the triangle edge 0%, it can be seen that he is about
92% Indo-European, and 8% Native American, (he was of no detectable East Asian or
African ancestry). The 8% Native American seems to have come from his paternal
grandparent, who was known to be a relatively pure Cherokee.
Mrs. Frudakis
Dr. Frudakis wife is from Mexico and she is of Hispanic descent. As discussed in the
Product Info portion of the website, Hispanics are known from anthropological history to
be an admixed population with European and Native American contribution. Using
ANCESTRYbyDNA, his wife plots as follows:

It can be seen here that she is of 26% Indo-European, and 74% Native American descent
(there was no detectable East Asian or African ancestry).
Their children
Because his three children each received a chromosome from their mother and father,
they should each plot somewhere in between him and his wife.
Using
ANCESTRYbyDNA, they plot as expected as shown below:
Frudakis Child #1

Frudakis Child #2

Frudakis Child #3

What do the last generation children look like? Tonys wife is very noticeably Native
American in heritage, whereas Tony appears to be of Southern European heritage. TC2
and TC3 have dark brown hair and noticeable Native American appearance.
Interestingly, TC1 does not he has light brown hair, brown eyes but little physical
affiliation with Native Americans. To his father, Tony, this is interesting because TC1
also has the least BGA affiliation with Native Americans, and in fact exhibits 6% East
Asian ancestry, which could have resulted from low levels in the father and/or mother,
below the detection limit of the test, but fortuitously passed to the son. What is
interesting is that among the three children, he is the one with the unusual BGA profile,
and he is also the one with the unique facial features, lighter complexion appearance, and
his personality is quite different from the other two. (In case you are wondering, a
paternity analysis was performed on TC1 and Tony is indeed TC1s father.). More
testing on family pedigrees will be necessary before it is safe to draw conclusive matches
between physical appearance and Ancestry 2.0 results, but DNAPrint collaborators have
already published one manuscript on this topic (Shriver, M., Parra, E., Dios, S., Bonilla,
C., Norton, H., Jovel, C., Pfaff, C., Jones, C., Massac, A., Cameron, N., Baron, A.,
Jackson, T., Argyropoulos, G., Jin, L., Hoggart, C., McKeigue, P. and R. Kittles. Skin
pigmentation, biogeographical ancestry and admixture mapping. Human Genetics
112:387-399.)
Which of Dr. Frudakis kids are more like him, and which are more like Mrs. Frudakis?
From these results it seems clear that Child #2 (60% Indo-European, 40% Native
American), has ancestral proportions more similar to his dad than his mom, whereas
Child #3 (58% Indo-European, 42% Native American) and Child #1 (54% IndoEuropean, 40% Native American, 6% East Asian) are of ancestral proportions about half
way between their two parents. These results show that Child #2 proportions are closer
to those of his father than his mother. Maybe this explains why he is the only one of the
three kids that wanted his daddy to hold him when he was an infant! (This is a facetious
statement in reality, and of course, behavior and personality are far more complex than
ancestral proportions.)
Since each child receives a chromosome from the mother and one from the father, how is
it that the children are different? The mother has chromosomes of mostly Native
American descent, though some are of Indo-European and African flavor as well. The
father has chromosomes of mostly Indo-European flavor though some are of Native
American flavor as well. When a child is conceived, they receive a chromosome from
mom and dad, but which of the two they receive from mom is random (this is called
independent assortment and it essentially means each child is like a new hand of cards
from a shuffled deck, where the cards represent chromosomes). Since some of moms
chromosome pairs have a member of the pair with European flavor, some of the children
will receive the European flavored chromosome while others will not. It appears from

this data that Child #3 received more of his mothers European flavored chromosomes
than the other two children did. Each child is a 50/50 blend of maternal and paternal
chromosomes, but their ancestral proportions are unique and random functions of those
of their parents.