OmniPop

OmniPop is a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet with several macros that attempts to take a person's CODIS markers and determine some sense of the person's ethnic background. To do this the spreadsheet performs a comparison with CODIS markers collected from various sample populations. The program is recognized and used by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for the purpose of clustering autosomal markers and is also suggested by commercial genealogical genetics companies to their customers for use in understanding their results.

Note that the accuracy of OmniPop is sometimes questionable, for several reasons:

• The CODIS markers were not necessarily chosen to be later used as a biogeographical aid.
• The sample sizes from the populations that OmniPop uses for comparison are small and may not accurately reflect the distribution of alleles within the actual populations.
• It may be that the number of markers involved in CODIS is too small to provide accurate biogeographical assessments.
• If a person from population A has marker values that naturally occur within population A but with very low frequency, but these same marker values occur frequently in population B, then OmniPop will report that the person has higher genetic affinity with population B even though population A is the person's true population of origin.

External links

• OmniPop spreadsheet
• Download OmniPop version 200.1
• Download OmniPop version 150.5
• Download page for other .xls DNA programs

For the following you must register for a DNA Forums username and password, and sign in to view:

• Several Y-chromosomal STR age predictor programs