Authors: Marina Muzzio Virginia Ramallo Josefina M B Motti María R Santos Jorge S López Camelo Graciela Bailliet
Publish Date: 2010/05/20
Volume: 125, Issue: 6, Pages: 905-906
Abstract
The letter by Dr Athey entitled “Comments on the article “Software for YHaplogroup Predictions a Word of Caution” discusses a paper of our authoring in the present Journal 1 Though at first glance his opinion may seem reasonable a careful analysis reveals a series of mistakes committed by Dr AtheyIn the mentioned letter one of the main concerns of Dr Athey is the amount of short tandem repeats STRs that were analyzed He comments that seven markers should be avoided explaining that an increase of that amount augments the probability of assignment stating that “With the addition of a sufficient number of markers the prediction probability for the correct haplogroup can be ‘driven’ past 99 in nearly all cases and this almost always occurs by the point where 20 markers have been used” Nonetheless he does not make reference to any sort of validation study so said 99 must only refer to the probability of assignment his own software provides What is more
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