Origins of We Irish (I've got some questions y'all!)

[Roisin1975]

Hello Anthrogenica people, As a mixed-race American whose paternal ancestry is heavily Irish, I found the Trinity College study on the genomic origins of the Irish quite interesting, but have some questions. Firstly, if I'm understanding the study correctly, they only tested the male DNA line, and if that is indeed how the study was conducted, how would we get a clear understanding of our ancient genetic background of our maternal line wasn't also studied? Secondly, how would the entire Neolithic population just disappear with absolutely no genetic trace of their existence whatsoever, would a parse population possibly be a factor? Lastly, I know the ancient remains that were tested were from people who from what's now Northern Ireland and am wondering, unless their descendants fanned out across Ireland, this would accurately paint an island-wide genomic picture. Just a few queries about a fascinating project.

[JoeyP37]

Too bad they didn't do the maternal line. My maternal line is Irish in origin, from the Tipperary area.

[Saetro]

Firstly, if I'm understanding the study correctly, they only tested the male DNA line.

Which study are you talking about?
Please provide a link, or at least lead author and a year.

[Saetro]

The landmark study on the Irish is
The Irish DNA Atlas: Revealing Fine-Scale Population Structure and History within Ireland by Gilbert et al, 2017
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-17124-4

It's autosomal DNA.

[pmokeefe]

The landmark study on the Irish is
The Irish DNA Atlas: Revealing Fine-Scale Population Structure and History within Ireland by Gilbert et al, 2017
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-17124-4

It's autosomal DNA.

A few additional references:

Insular Celtic population structure and genomic footprints of migration (2018)

Long-term archaeological perspectives on new genomic and environmental evidence from early medieval Ireland (2019)

A dynastic elite in monumental Neolithic society (2020)

[Roisin1975]

Hey there lovely people, finally getting a chance to reply. Anyhow, went back and read the initial PNAS paper that Lara Cassidy et al wrote, and indeed there's a sentence towards the end, in the section that summarizes the findings, that speaks to the Bronze Age genomic replacement and says that 33% of our genes can be attributed to those who migrated to Ireland. As I'm not adept at interpreting scientific results, I'm thinking I may be misinterpreting what that sentence means and would be glad to get some clarity on someone who's better versed. I linked the paper I read below:

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1518445113

[Saetro]

As I'm not adept at interpreting scientific results

A useful general tip for getting some interpretation is to run a Google News search on key terms from the paper and key authors and look for commentary articles, sometimes from the journal in question itself (editor's introduction to the issue, for example), but mostly from science journalists from a variety of news websites.
(Exclude tabloid newspaper articles.)
I do this when I can't quite understand an article myself, but mostly to find something that ancient-DNA-newbie friends can understand.
(They generally comment only at the time of formal publication, not for pre-prints.)

As a bonus, when the original article is behind a paywall, the news articles often show useful charts, maps and diagrams that would otherwise be paywalled.