Wednesday, October 03, 2018

Using DNApainter to visualize match "coverage" & collect more clues

I've been using  DNApainter(a WONDERFUL DNA analysis tool by Jonny Perl) for a while now.  I'm not sure the exact date, but it couldn't have been more than a few minutes after I read about it in the Genetic Genealogy Tips & Techniques Facebook Group.  You can learn more about both of those by clicking on the linked text.  DNApainter is free but has additional tools available for subscribers.  Today I subscribed and I've been playing around with it.  I wanted to see what kind of coverage I had from my matches at GEDmatch.  I had used my kit and my Mom's kit to phase my DNA matches.  My Dad passed before we began DNA testing.  While the Paternal Phased kit is not a true comparison against his it will show all the matches I have which aren't Mom's which are presumably paternal. 


  • At DNApainter,  I created A New/ Blank Profile --I named mine Marie GEDmatch
  • At GEDmatch, I ran Tier 1 Matching Segment reports for each phased kit and saved each as csv files. You should set the minimum cMs high enough to reduce by chance matches.  I set mine at 12 cM for this.  I can delete matches if necessary later.
  • At DNApainter, I opened the New / Blank Profile and used DNApainter's premium feature to Import Paternal phased (P1) & Maternal Phased(M1) match list.
  • As I imported each phased group, I chose a color, name, and identified it as paternal  or maternal matches.
It was abt at 74% coverage(I wish I had taken a screenshot then but I didn't) and I wanted to import the data from the painting I had done on my main profile.  I exported the segment information from that main profile and imported it into the Marie GEDmatch profile.so that I could identify more matching segments.  

Below is a screenshot showing only the GEDmatch Import as Active(using the key)



Once the main profile is imported here is how mine looked. Now to look at each chromosome and collect the clues.



4 comments:

  1. Interesting post! I hadn't heard of this tool before.

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    1. Thanks for reading my blog and commenting. If you have DNA tested, give it a try.

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  2. You and I were on the same wavelength this week, Marie! I just started using DNA Painter a few weeks ago, but it's already my favorite DNA tool. :-)

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    1. It really is a WONDERFUL tool! It's helped me so much and is so much more user friendly than some of the other tools I use for DNA analysis. Thanks for the comment :-)

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