Painting My Chromosomes

In order to come up with "just the right" paint colors for the home🏠 we're building, I've been spending a lot of time at the Sherwin-Williams paint store, or online at Houzz, or with the designers.  There are over a 100 shades of white paint alone!  It's all very overwhelming.  

But, on the happier side, there is one paint job I have been enjoying... 

Painting My Chromosomes.  

Recently I started using a free online DNA tool for chromosome mapping called DNA Painter.

DNA painter helps you map or “paint” your chromosomes to find out which ancestors belong to your specific segments of your DNA.  I only paint segments of a match when I am certain of the common ancestral couple we both descend from and received our common DNA from.  In the past, I have kept spread sheets of my matches but I think I like using DNA Painter better.  And, it’s much more fun to “paint” 🎨 a match than it is to add them to a spreadsheet. 

My chromosomes (all 23 of them) are 55% painted and I could probably have closer to 80-90% painted if Ancestry.com had a chromosome browser showing segments matching.  I have found DNA matches with paintable segments at FamilyTreeDNA, MyHeritage, 23andme, and GedMatch.  Each of the aforementioned companies have a chromosome browser and I just copy the information and paste it into DNA Painter.  But, I have more matches on AncestryDNA than anywhere else.  In order to add my Ancestry.com matches, the Ancestry match  would need to download their raw DNA data from Ancestry and transfer to one of the vendors which accepts downloads - such as FamilyTreeDNA, MyHeritage, and/or GedMatch.  For information on how to transfer DNA files, click here.

For each numbered chromosome (1 through 23), the top pale blue line represents the DNA  received from my father, and the bottom pale pink line represents the DNA that came from my mother.  My DNA matches from common ancestors are painted on top of each paternal or maternal line.

I made two separate profiles for my own matches, the top profile image showing my four grandparent lines, and one bottom one showing all identified common ancestors.  I have also created a profile for each parent (both of my parents have tested their DNA).  Also, I have created profiles for my brick-wall lines.

This first image shows my four grandparent lines.  I created this profile to visually see which of my grandparent lines were more complete.  The 23 chromosomes are listed on the left.  My paternal grandparents are shown in blue and green on the top pale blue paternal line of each chromosome.   The blue represents all my matches on my Martin-Weiss family lines, which are my German lines.  My German lines will always be the least complete because there are only three generations here in the United States.  My Wilson-Hatfield family lines are represented by green. 

Pink and yellow represents my maternal grandparent lines: Baldwin-Stewart family lines are pink, Leffel-Box family lines are yellow.

The next profile I created for my DNA shows all of my ancestors who have been identified with segment matching information.  I have 28 ancestral couples whose segments have been identified.  I have not added close family matches (siblings, 1st cousins, aunts & uncles) because I would not know which of our shared matches came from which of our shared grandparents.  So, I started with matches who are 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc cousins.  All of my great-grandparents and 2nd great-grandparents are represented, as well as many of the 3rd-4th-5th great-grandparents.   The program allows me to click on any of the colored segments to see which ancestral couple gave me that segment.  My favorite is to click on the ancestral couple in the chart on the right to see all the segments identified as coming from them. 

Click on above images to view larger.

I love DNA Painter😍    If you want to join in the fun of painting chromosomes, just go to DNA Painter and start painting away.  But watch out -- it's very addicting!!

Instructions for using DNA Painter can be found on the DNAeXplained - Genetic Genealogy website:  DNAPainter Instructions and Resources 

Instructions for transferring DNA from one company to another can be found here: DNA file Upload-Download and Transfer Instructions to and from DNA Testing Companies.

DNA Posts on this Blog:
Finding Family with DNA
Finding More Family with DNA
FM Baldwin DNA Project