I have been lax in painting my Chromosome Map on DNA Painter, and made it a genealogy goal for 2020, which I miserably failed. So I made it a 2021 goal, and have now done as much as I can at this time.
I want to share my results and be a good example for readers who might be considering doing this. Please understand that I am NOT an expert at DNA testing and analysis, but I love to extend my knowledge and capabilities. If I can do it, you probably can do it too.
1) Making a Chromosome Map on DNA Painter is really pretty easy if you have enough DNA matches with known common ancestors (or can figure out the known common ancestors) on MyHeritageDNA, 23andMe, FamilyTreeDNA, and GEDmatch.
If you only have AncestryDNA matches, then you are out of luck because AncestryDNA does not provide a chromosome browser, and does not provide chromosome segment definitions for your DNA matches, much to the dismay of every AncestryDNA customer who is a genealogist. If they did, with the 400+ DNA matches with known "Common Ancestors" that I currently have on AncestryDNA, my Chromosome Map would probably be fairly complete.
It helps to understand the chromosome browsers on the DNA services, because that is where you can download the DNA segments from a specific DNA match to a .csv file (the start of a spreadsheet file). You can then copy the DNA segment information from the spreadsheet into DNA Painter, answer a few questions about the known relationship, and DNA Painter "paints" that segment onto your chromosome representation.
Several genealogy bloggers who specialize in DNA analysis have written blog posts about the process to turn the segment data into visual segments:
* DNA Painter Match Data Help and Segments by Jonny Perl on DNAPainter.
* DNAPainter Instructions and Resources by Roberta Estes on DNAeXplained - Genetic Genealogy.
2) DNA Painter provides the Chromosome Map for FREE for one Map on their website under Chromosome Maps for account holders.
Here is my DNA Painter home page:
3) Since I have made a chromosome map, it shows me my status. When I click on the link for my name, I can see my painted Chromosome Map (two screens):My 23 chromosomes are listed on the left. Each chromosome has two lines (except my X) - the light blue line is from my father, the light pink line is from my mother. I only received my X chromosome from my mother because I am male.
The URL for this post is: https://www.geneamusings.com/2021/02/painting-my-ancestral-chromosome-map.html
Copyright (c) 2021, Randall J. Seaver
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2 comments:
You might want to put the ancestors on your key with the earliest generations first, i.e. 4xgreat before 3xgreat etc. That way you will see all the segments assigned to the most distant ancestors and they won't be overlaid by segments assigned to a more recent generation.
You can easily rearrange the order by clicking on the little dots to the right of the name and dragging the listing to a different location.
Why did you paint segments that came from a set of grandparents? That's the same as saying that the DNA came from one parent-- and that is a given.
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