Genealogy Junkie

Ancestor Spiral

8/3/2019

I like finding new ways to present data and someone posted about this Ancestor Spiral today (link Here) on the Genealogy Addicts Anonymous Facebook Group. You can use any long string of words, but when an ancestor list is used, it resembles the rings of a tree trunk, with the older ancestors in the center and the more recent ones on the outer rings.

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Obtaining FIR Boundaries on GEDmatch using Phased and "My Evil Twin" Phased Kits

12/4/2016

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Since my blog posting last month, Obtaining FIR Boundaries on GEDmatch using the Little Tick Marks, GEDmatch has introduced a new Tier 1 tool, known as "My Evil Twin" Phasing, which makes it much easier to obtain the boundaries for FIRs (fully-identical regions) if at least one child's results are available; this is used in combination with the normal phasing tool.

Figure 1: Using a Child's Phased and "My Evil Twin" Phased Kits to Identify FIR Boundaries in a Parent (GEDmatch One-to-One Comparisons)

Figure 1 shows one-to-one comparisons on GEDmatch for Chromosome 1:

Panel (A) is the comparison between my mother and my maternal aunt (full-siblings), showing there are 2 FIRs, the green bars labeled FIR (1) and FIR (2). The table above the graphic gives the boundaries for the HIRs (half-identical regions), the blue bars, but not for the green FIR bars.
Panel (B) is the comparison between my maternally-phased kit and my maternal aunt. This shows that my phased kit provides the end location of my mother's/aunt's FIR (1) at 37,435,730 (black line 1) and the end location of my mother's/aunt's FIR (2) at 186,250,473 (black line 3).
Panel (C) is the comparison between my maternally-phased "evil twin" kit and my maternal aunt. This shows that "my evil twin" phased kit provides the start location of my mother's/aunt's FIR (2) at 156,185,705 (red line 2).

Before the availability of the "my evil twin" phasing tool, I could only use this method to obtain some of the start and end locations using my normal phased kit (and my sister's phased kit could be used for some, but not all, of the remainder) – but with the new "my evil twin" phasing tool, this method can be used for all of the parent/sibling FIRs.

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Obtaining FIR Boundaries on GEDmatch using the Little Tick Marks

11/1/2016

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Tick marks on GEDmatch One-to-One Expanded View

FIGURE 1: Two Types of Tick Marks on GEDmatch One-to-One Comparison

Question: How do you obtain the boundaries of FIRs (fully-identical regions) on GEDmatch?
Answer: Using the little "inverted V" tick marks on the one-to-one tool graphic (see Figure 1).

The red arrows point to regularly spaced tick marks, which identify every 100 SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms). The black arrows point to irregularly spaced "inverted V" tick marks; these show the absolute SNP positions and are spaced at 1 Mb (1,000,000) intervals, with labels every 10 Mb (10,000,000) – in the example here, the label "K--30M" represents SNP position 30 Mb (30,000,000). [Someone has pointed out that the "K" on GEDmatch is actually a vertical line with left-pointing arrow (<--), which I agree is almost certainly the case, but I've continued to use "K" in this blog posting as it is simplistically descriptive.]

Follow-up Question: But where are the little tick marks?

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Amusing Poem in 1869 Bible

8/21/2016

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Elizabeth "Bessie" Thomas (1851-1930) was brought up in Llanerchymedd (pronunciation) on the island of Anglesey in Wales. In 1869, when she was 18 years old, she wrote the following poem in the front cover of her bible. The last line of her poem is particularly poignant, as she is now being remembered on the internet and her words potentially seen by far more people than she could have ever envisioned.

Elizabeth Thomas is my name
And Wales is my nation.
Llanerchymedd is my dwelling place
And Christ is my salvation.
When I am dead and buried
And all my bones are rotten,
Here is a Book for you to look,
When I am quite forgotten.
The grass is green, the rose is red,
Remember me when I am dead.

Bessie Thomas, September 22, [18]69

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Chromosome Maps Showing Centromeres, Excess IBD Regions and HLA Region

6/9/2016

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Chr Map_Centromeres Build 36_Regions of XS IBD_HLA Region_SNP-Poor Regions

FIGURE 1: Positions of Centromeres, Regions of Excess IBD, HLA Region, and SNP-Poor Regions (Build 36)

FIGURE 2: Positions of Centromeres, Regions of Excess IBD, HLA Region, and SNP-Poor Regions (Build 37)

I do a lot of chromosome mapping using Kitty Cooper's great Ancestor Mapping Tool. There are a few regions in the genome more likely to have issues when comparing matching DNA segments with others: at the centromeres and regions of excess IBD sharing (IBD = identical by descent). Instead of looking these up in tables, I've plotted them on chromosome maps, as visual representations are easier than looking up values in a table and they allow side-by-side comparisons to be made to my chromosome maps. I also added the Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) region on chromosome 6, which exhibits greater IBD sharing than expected, and the SNP-poor regions (SNP = single nucleotide polypeptide) rather than having blank areas on the chromosome map.

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DNArboretum: A Great Free Google Chrome Extension for Viewing Trees on 23andMe (Old-Style Trees) and FTDNA

9/4/2015

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DNArboretum

Thanks to a posting on the Yahoo! DNA-Newbie message board (Topic 49775), I'm now aware of a great FREE extension for Google Chrome, which was released in April 2014 by "neanderling" (if you have a 23andMe account, see thread Here). I hadn't seen it mentioned elsewhere, so thought a blog posting would spread the word, as I'm certain that others will find it useful too.

Let's face it, the trees at 23andMe and Family Tree DNA (FTDNA) are pretty awkward and clunky. DNArboretum quickly extracts information from a displayed tree and presents it as a list based on Ahnentafel number, showing the name and, if included on the tree, the year and location of birth and death. You can then either skim down the list, or search for names or locations. This is so much easier than trying to wade through the trees on either 23andMe or FTDNA. Unfortunately, it only works on the old-style trees on 23andMe – for anyone with a tree that is now on MyHeritage, the only way a tree can now be set up (see 23andMe and MyHeritage Collaboration), DNArboretum doesn't work, but there are still some old-style trees on 23andMe if people didn't "upgrade" to a tree on MyHeritage. When available, at least 9 generations are displayed at 23andMe and up to 15 generations at FTDNA.

The other nice feature of DNArboretum is that you have the option to show different inheritance modes: all ancestors (autosomal mode), or only those on the X-chromosome DNA, mitochondrial DNA, or Y-chromosome DNA lines.

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ADSA is Now Available for GEDmatch Kits!

4/13/2015

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Quick Guide for Creating a GEDmatch-ADSA

Flow Chart for Creating a GEDmatch-ADSA Record

The Autosomal DNA Segment Analyzer (ADSA) was originally developed as a way to organize, visualize, work with your match list and chromosome data, and determine which of your matches are also related to each other (that is, ICW = in common with) using information from Family Tree DNA’s (FTDNA) Family Finder test. Now it can also be used with GEDmatch.

When I blogged about the original ADSA in early 2014 (Part 1 and Part 2), I indicated the following: "ASDA is an amazing tool developed by Don Worth and really fills a niche, in that it is incredibly useful for both novices (and those not wanting/able/prepared to spend hours and hours working with spreadsheets) as well as those who are more experienced and have elaborate and sophisticated Excel spread-sheets to work with their DNA data."

Rob Warthen from DNAGedcom has worked his programming magic to create a GEDmatch loading tool, allowing us to create GEDmatch-ADSA reports in the same way as those of us on FTDNA have been able to create FTDNA-ADSA reports.

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Cost-Effective Autosomal DNA Options for UK Residents

2/1/2015

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The big news this week for anyone with British ancestry is the announcement that AncestryDNA is now available in the UK and Ireland – click on the image for Ancestry UK's blog posting and see Here for the press announcement, as reported by Chris Paton on The British GENES blog. With Ancestry's marketing power and brand-recognition, this is likely to provide a huge boost in the number of Brits in the DNA databases, which will be very welcome for anyone with British ancestry (whether they know it or not) and should make it a lot easier for many of us to make genealogical connections through DNA testing.

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Inconsistent Culling of Matches and Shaky Leaf Hints on AncestryDNA

12/12/2014

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I was aware that AncestryDNA would be reducing the number of DNA matches to something more reasonable (see, for example, When Less is More), so I was fully prepared for a significant reduction in DNA matches for myself and my parents. However, I expected some consistency with what would be done (whether I agreed with it or not), but in my limited experience, this is not what has happened.

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Technique for Segment Triangulation when GEDmatch Tool not Available

8/28/2014

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Those of us who are heavy users of GEDmatch are sorely missing the wonderful segment triangulation tool, which hasn't yet been restored since the relocation of GEDmatch to new servers. In order to be able to continue identifying triangulated groups with DNA matches, I'm using a workaround, by expanding what I previously did for the X-chromosome (Chr 23 in the figure below), which isn't included in the segment triangulation tool. In addition, segment triangulation on GEDmatch is limited to the highest 200 matches, so this method can also be used for lower level matches, even when the segment triangulation tool is back.