Stepping Up The DNA Game
When MyHeritage started accepting uploads of DNA results from Ancestry, I uploaded right away. I didn’t initially have a lot of matches, but I figured that would change over time. I still don’t have anywhere close to the number of matches that I have on Ancestry. But that’s okay. Because MyHeritage has something just as good—useful tools.
Like Ancestry, MyHeritage list the matches you share with a particular person. Unlike Ancestry, they also show the match’s estimated relationship to both you and that person, and how much DNA you each share with that person.
MyHeritage also displays your match’s ethnicities. But MyHeritage shows how your ethnicites compare to your match and highlight which you have in common.
Best of all? MyHeritage has a chromosome browser! You can see exactly where you share DNA—which chromosome, which genomic position, and how large a segment—right on the match’s page. You can also download this information—so that you can use it in a program like Genome Mate Pro or DNAPainter for further analysis.
And with MyHeritage’s announcement during RootsTech, it’s gotten even better!
Upgrade
Not only does MyHeritage have the Chromosome Browser on each matches’ page for a one-to-one comparison, you can now compare up to seven individuals in their new One-to-Many Chromosome Browser.1 This allows you to discover where your shared matches actually match. Furthermore, it will show you triangulated segments.
“If a match is shown as triangulated, it means that you, A, and B all match each other precisely on that segment, and therefore all of you are probably related, and you probably got that triangulated segment from the same common ancestor.”
Since this is the point of testing—verifiable relationships—this is awesome and MyHeritage is the only vendor offering it for free.
Furthermore, not only can you export the segment information for each match individually, you can now download all your matches and the shared DNA segment information for all your matches at once or download the shared DNA information for the matches you compare in the One-to-Many Chromosome Browser.
Wait! There’s more planned for the future.2
The company has created one big family tree based on everyone who has tested with them or uploaded DNA to be processed by them. They use this to determine your estimated relationship with your DNA matches.
The next step—and this is the future talking, the near future—is to combine your DNA matches, their trees, and their collected documentation to construct a family tree for you and your matches. They call this the “Theory of Family Relativity.” It would still need to be verified via research, of course, but would provide at minimum a starting point for that research.3
Cool, huh? For some of my matches, this would be invaluable.
For the details of this and other announcements, please visit the MyHeritage Blog (https://blog.myheritage.com).
Footnotes
- Aaron, “Major Upgrade to the MyHeritage Chromosome Browser for Better Exploration of DNA Matches,” MyHeritage Blog, posted 2 Mar 2018 (https://blog.myheritage.com accessed 4 Mar 2018). ↩
- Roberta Estes, “Day 2 RootsTech— Vendors, Visits and MyHeritage is Smokin’ Hot,” DNAeXplained — Genetic Genealogy, posted 2 Mar 2018 (https://dna-explained.com : accessed 3 Mar 2018). ↩
- For more information, check out the the video from MyHeritage’s RootsTech session “Perspectives on Combining Genealogy and Genetics,” particularly starting at about 29 minutes. ↩
Cite This Page:
Kris Hocker, "Stepping Up The DNA Game," A Pennsylvania Dutch Genealogy, the genealogy & family research site of Kris Hocker, modified 19 Mar 2018 (https://www.krishocker.com/stepping-up-the-dna-game/ : accessed 2 May 2024).
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