Adoption DNA Match Strategy: Combine DNA Test Types

Combining DNA test types can give you a better picture of your overall genealogical relationship to someone else. DNA expert Diahan Southard shares an example from her family about how she used different DNA tests to solve an adoption mystery.

Combine your autosomal test results with the results of your mitochondrial DNA or YDNA test to make some amazing connections today!

My family recently visited the Jelly Belly Factory in northern California. Of course, at the end of the tour, they funneled us into their gift shop where we felt compelled to buy jelly beans and other sundry treats.

My favorite part of the big box we bought were the recipes on the side. We could turn the already delicious variety of flavors into even more pallet-pleasing options by eating specific combinations of jelly beans at the same time. Like 2 green apply jelly beans + 1 cinnamon jelly bean = apple pie. Who knew!

Naturally, this got me thinking about DNA.

Combining DNA Test Types

Specifically, I was thinking about the power of combining multiple test types to get a better picture of our overall genealogical relationship to someone else.

If you recall, there are three kinds of DNA tests available for genealogists:

  • Autosomal DNA
  • Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA)
  • Y chromosome DNA (YDNA)

Much of the focus these days is on how to use the autosomal DNA in our family history research. This may be because the autosomal DNA covers both sides of your family tree, so it is seen as a catchall for our family history. While it is a very powerful tool for our research, it can also be a bit overwhelming to try to determine how you are related to someone else.

Let’s look at an example from my own family history.

My mom took an autosomal DNA test at 23andMe and matched with Tom. Their predicted genealogical relationship, based on how much DNA they shared, was second cousins.

To begin to understand how they are related, we need to understand which ancestor could be shared by people who are genetic second cousins. To figure it out, you can count backward like this: people who share parents are siblings, sharing grandparents makes you first cousins, and sharing great-grandparents makes you second cousins.

So, if my mom and Tom are true second cousins (meaning there aren’t any of those once-removed situations going on, but that’s a subject for another time), then we should be able to find their common ancestor among their great-grandparents.

Each of us has eight great-grandparents. Because we can’t usually narrow down shared DNA to a single person, but rather to an ancestral couple, we are really just looking at four possible ancestral couple connections between my mom and Tom.

My mom doesn’t have any known ancestors, as she was adopted, so we can only evaluate Tom’s line. Tom was kind enough to share his pedigree chart with us, and he had all four of his couples listed. But how do we know which one is the shared couple with my mom?

Narrowing Down the Results

Now, for those of you without an adoption, you will have some other clues to help you figure out which of the four (or eight, if you are looking at a third cousin, or 16 if you are looking at a fourth cousin) ancestral couples is shared between you and your match. Start by looking for shared surnames.

If that comes up short, evaluate each couple by location. If you see an ancestral couple who is in a similar location to your line, then that couple becomes your most likely connecting point.

What then? Do genealogy! Find out everything you can about that couple and their descendants to see if you can connect that line to your own.

However, in my mom’s case, we didn’t have any surnames or locations to narrow down which ancestral couple was the connection point between our line and Tom’s. But even if we had locations, that may not have helped as Tom is very homogenous. All of his ancestors were from the same place!

But, we did have one very important clue: the mitochondrial DNA. Remember mtDNA traces a direct maternal line. So my mom’s mtDNA is the same as her mom’s, which is the same as her mom’s etc.

At 23andMe they don’t test the full mitochondrial DNA sequence (FMS) like they do at Family Tree DNA. For family history purposes, you really want the FMS to help you narrow down your maternal line connection to others. But 23andMe does provide your haplogroup, otherwise known as your deep ancestral group. These groups are named with a letter/number combination. My mom is W1 and we noticed that Tom is also W1.

This meant that my mom and Tom share a direct maternal line – or put another way, Tom’s mother’s mother’s mother was the same as my mom’s mother’s mother’s mother. That means there is only one couple out of the four possible couples that could connect my mom to Tom: his direct maternal line ancestor Marianna Huck, and her husband Michael Wetzstien.

Now you can only perform this wondrous feat if you and your match have both tested at 23andMe, or have both taken the mtDNA test at Family Tree DNA.

Just as a Popcorn Jelly Belly plus two Blueberry Jelly Bellies makes a blueberry muffin, combining your autosomal DNA test results with your mtDNA test results (or YDNA for that matter) can yield some interesting connections that just might break down that family history brick wall.

Get your mtDNA and YDNA tested at Family Tree DNA

If you are considering testing your YDNA and/or your mtDNA, then Family Tree DNA is the place for you!

Even if you aren’t trying to solve an adoption mystery, you can utilize these additional tests to break down other brick walls in your genealogical research and learn more about your heritage. You can take their Family Finder autosomal test, YDNA, or Mitochondrial (mtDNA) full sequence test. Click here to shop now!

About the Author: Diahan Southard has worked with the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation, and has been in the genetic genealogy industry since it has been an industry. She holds a degree in Microbiology and her creative side helps her break the science up into delicious bite-sized pieces for you. She’s the author of a full series of DNA guides for genealogists.

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links and Genealogy Gems will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on these links (at no additional cost to you). Thank you for supporting Genealogy Gems!

This article was originally published on April 17, 2017 and updated on April 5, 2019.

YDNA Test Q&A for Genealogy

Here’s a YDNA test Q&A with questions from a Genealogy Gems Podcast listener. Your DNA Guide Diahan Southard has answers: where to test, on joining a family DNA project, and those conflicting DNA ethnicity percentages.

Recently Lisa Louise Cooke received a voicemail from Genealogy Gems Podcast listener Ken. He’s been doing genealogy for more than five years and he’s listening to the entire podcast series (he’s up to episode 180 already!). He says, “I’ve made amazing discoveries and listening to you give all of these tips is fantastic! I listen to you on the way to work; I listen on the way home.” (Love it!) Then he asked some DNA questions that Lisa forwarded to me:

“My last name is Maloney. There’s so many of them, it’s crazy. My dad told me that my grandfather got into a fight with his brothers over a piece of land, so they never talked after that. Well, I found out that I have a second cousin with my exact same name who lives three miles from me. I’ve lived here my whole life and I never knew him. I saw him in the phone book, but I never dreamed that he had anything to do with me. I finally met him about two months ago.

Anyway, I want to take the YDNA test and the only one I know about doing it with is Family Tree DNA. Is that a good company to deal with? And, one more real quick thing: AncestryDNA says I’m 69% Great Britain. These other places say I’m like 30-some percent Scandinavian. So who’s right?”

Maloney is a common surname in the United States. In the 2000 census, it ranked #1049 in popularity (click here to see how we know that). There are also a lot of Maloneys in Ireland. This 1906 photo of the Maloney family of Newtown, Waterford, Ireland is at the National Library of Ireland (we found this digitized image at Wikipedia).

On taking YDNA tests

Thanks so much for your question, Ken. I wish everyone had your enthusiasm about YDNA testing! You are absolutely right in thinking that the YDNA test can help you answer questions about your direct paternal line. Because of the way YDNA is inherited, other Maloneys who share your YDNA also share a common ancestor with you.

Yes, the best place to start with YDNA testing is to first test at least 37 markers at Family Tree DNA. 67 is more ideal, but you can always test more later.

Take your YDNA test results a step further

The next thing to do is to join a family project. You can search for family projects right from the homepage at www.ftdna.com. Just put in any surname of interest, and you can see how many people with that surname have been tested, and if there are any family projects associated with that surname. Clicking on the name of a project will take you to that project page where you can join the project and contact the project coordinator with your questions. (Learn more about family or surname projects below.)

Now, while it is of great benefit to see others matching your YDNA and sharing an ancestor with you, an often overlooked benefit of the family project is your ability to see all of the people who are sharing your surname, but do NOT share a direct paternal line with you. This list can be a goldmine, as it can save you hours of wasted research barking up the wrong tree. Any ancestor represented in the surname project who does not share YDNA with you is not your ancestor! It doesn’t matter if their name is spelled just like yours, or that they named all of their eldest sons Solomon, or that they lived in the same county as your family. THEY ARE NOT YOUR FAMILY. So you can move on, and find other, more valuable leads.

DNA ethnicity: Conflicting results

As for your questions about ethnicity, you may want to check out a couple of blog posts here at genealogy gems to point you in the right direction:

Keep up the good genetic genealogy testing, Ken! It is bound to help you and your Maloneys.

More on YDNA tests in Premium eLearning

If you’re a Genealogy Gems Premium eLearning member, you have access to a quick-and-easy video tutorial series on YDNA testing from Diahan Southard (Premium eLearning now has more than 20 DNA video tutorials). You also have access to the recent Genealogy Gems Premium Podcast Episode 160, in which Diahan compares her current ethnicity percentages at major testing sites and gives tips for better understanding them. Click here if you’d like to learn more about Premium eLearning.

About the Author: Diahan Southard has worked with the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation, and has been in the genetic genealogy industry since it has been an industry. She holds a degree in Microbiology and her creative side helps her break the science up into delicious bite-sized pieces for you. She’s the author of a full series of DNA guides for genealogists.

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links and Genealogy Gems will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on these links (at no additional cost to you). Thank you for supporting Genealogy Gems!

Get a Second Opinion on Your DNA Test

A second opinion on your DNA test can help your genetic genealogy research in several ways. Your DNA Guide Diahan Southard proposes several scenarios that can help you look at your DNA test results in a new way. (Retesting may not even be necessary!)

Second Opinions on a DNA Test

“Get a second opinion.” That’s the advice we hear about our healthcare and the tactic my kids use when one parent says, “No.” But it should also be a strategy employed in our genetic genealogy pursuits.

Second opinions come in multiple varieties. You can move your DNA test results between companies. For example, while you can’t transfer into 23andMe or AncestryDNA, you can transfer your autosomal DNA results out of all companies and into Family Tree DNAMyHeritage, and now Living DNA. (Click here for step-by-step instructions.) This transfer gives you a second opinion on your ethnicity results. We have talked about how those numbers can differ between companies and your “real” values may be somewhere in between.

 

However, you may also want to get a second opinion for your match page. Because of different analysis methods at the various testing companies, the same match might be reported to share a different amount of DNA. Those differences should be slight, and shouldn’t influence your relationship. Remember that the amount of DNA you share is measured in centimorgans (cMs), and generally speaking, the more cMs you share, the closer your relationship. (Click here to read more about centimorgans.)

That total amount of shared DNA can help us with another kind of second opinion. Because DNA inheritance is a random event, the amount of DNA two cousins receive from their shared 2X great grandparents can be very different. For example, according to data collected form the Shared cM Project (SCP) individuals who are documented third cousins vary widely in the amount of DNA they share. They may share as much as 253 cM but as little as 6 cM!

A Second Opinion Case Study

Let’s look at an example to see how a second opinion might be helpful in solving a genealogical mystery. In the image we see:

  • you
  • your sister
  • your matches Isaac and Allen

Your match Allen believes that his ancestor Mark is actually the eldest child of Jacob and Jillian. If this is the case, Allen would be your third cousin.

However, when you look at the total amount of shared DNA, you and Allen share only 48 cMs, which is below the 74 cM average for third cousins and fits better in the range of fourth cousins. Your sister is sharing slightly more, at 54 cM. So along with Allen, you begin forming a hypothesis that his ancestor Mark is actually a nephew to Jacob and Jillian, making your common ancestor either Jacob or Jillian’s parents.

 

However, you then get a new match in Isaac, who is a known third cousin, also a descendant of Jacob and Jillian, and you are sharing 86 cM. You then ask Isaac to tell you how many cMs he is sharing with Allen and he reports a whopping 92 cM! If we find the average amount of shared cMs between you, your sister, and Isaac and Allen, we get 65 cMs, which is much closer to the 74 cMs we would expect if you were truly 3rd cousins. In this case we could say that the genetics supports a connection between these individuals at Jacob and Jillian.

While you could still be 4th cousins instead of 3rd, having a second opinion in your sister, and then a third opinion in your known cousin can be very helpful in determining your actual relationship to Allen. Of course, the only way to know for sure if Mark is the child of Jacob and Jillian will be to find the genealogical paper trail. But in the meantime, you can continue to look for more descendants of this couple who have been DNA tested, and get a more complete picture of your genetic relationship.

More Help with Your DNA Results

About the Author: Diahan Southard has worked with the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation, and has been in the genetic genealogy industry since it has been an industry. She holds a degree in Microbiology and her creative side helps her break the science up into delicious bite-sized pieces for you. She’s the author of a full series of DNA guides for genealogists.

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links and Genealogy Gems will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on these links (at no additional cost to you). Thank you for supporting Genealogy Gems!

DNA Ethnicity Accuracy: How It’s Getting More Specific

When it comes to the accuracy of DNA ethnicity results, there’s some good news: they’re getting more specific. Your initial results that said “Irish” may now point specifically to Ulster. Here, Your DNA Guide Diahan Southard talks about this promising progress.

One of the questions I get asked most often is to predict the future of genetic genealogy. While I don’t have a crystal ball, I am certain that the future of genetic genealogy holds two things: automation and specificity. We will save the automation discussion for another day (it was hinted at in RootsTech announcements by both MyHeritage and Living DNA) and focus here on the exciting topic of specificity.

DNA ethnicity accuracy: Specificity on the rise

Since the launch of the autosomal DNA test, we have seen an incredible increase in the specificity of our origins reports. In 2007, 23andMe was breaking down your heritage into three main categories: Europe, Asia, and Africa. Now, 11 years later, after several revisions, they have released a new update expanding their origins product from 31 categories to 150! That’s an increase in specificity of 4,900%!!!! All companies are moving in this same direction, with AncestryDNA releasing a small update in April of 2018, to try to provide more detail to the story of your ancestral heritage.

This trend toward increasing specificity also appears in reports from academia. For example, in December of 2017, there was a study released by the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland working with the Genealogical Society of Ireland. The study details a component that is especially important to genealogists: time. While it might be interesting to know that you had an ancestor who once walked the moors, it would be even more valuable to know when he was there.

In this study, they can see both the current genetic clusters in Ireland (they report 10) but also measure how genetically similar those clusters are to other places. That means we can not only tell you where you are from in Ireland, but also where you were before that. It’s a bit like the sticker you see on the fruit at the grocery store. Right now it is in your store, but the sticker tells you where it was before that.

AncestryDNA origins reports

This same kind of research is reflected in AncestryDNA’s Migrations, which are a feature of their origins report. Migration communities, like Lower Midwest Settlers, identify your ancestral locations hundreds of years ago, as opposed to the Regions, like Europe West, which identify your ancestral locations thousands of years ago.

Sticking with the Irish theme, we see that AncestryDNA places Ireland in a region with Scotland and Wales. This large region is then broken up into four subregions, each with its own subregions, for a total of 24 different Irish categories. (You can view this image by clicking on See all 150+ regions at the bottom of the ethnicity window.)

 

Much like the study from academia in Ireland, we can track these Irish groups through time using the tools at AncestryDNA. Essentially, if you find yourself in any of the subregions, then you know that your connection to that particular place was likely within a genealogical timeframe (the last 300 years). What if you do not yet find yourself in a subgroup, but as shown in the example here, you see simply no connection to these subregions? It either means your connection to Ireland is farther back than 300ish years, or that the subregion you are from has not yet been defined.

Living DNA ethnicity categories in UK

Currently Living DNA has the most specificity in the UK as they can distinguish between 42 regions in England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland (map shown here). Living DNA has announced similar regional projects in other countries, including Germany.

But even with this specificity, it can still be tricky to make genealogical connections between your maps and your family tree. In the coming months and years, even that will change. As the databases get bigger, it will be the connections between people who are tested that will add to the layer of genealogy specificity that we are missing. In other words, it will be less about whether you have a specific piece of DNA tagging you as from Cork, Ireland, and more about the fact that your DNA connects to you to an entire group of people who have documented ancestors from Cork. This may seem like a small distinction, but it makes all the difference, and is the driving principle behind AncestryDNA’s Migrations tool, and what Living DNA is hinting at as well.

So, what will the future hold? Nobody has all the answers, and that is part of the fun of it. But one thing I am certain of: the future does hold more specific answers to our genetic genealogy questions.

Did you hear?

We have added 21 of Diahan Southard’s DNA tutorial videos to our Premium Membership, which is now Premium eLearning! DNA is a gateway to genealogical discoveries, so it pays to know all you can about using DNA in your family history research plan. We’ve organized Diahan’s comprehensive DNA tutorial series into four categories: General DNA (including beginner), Autosomal DNA, Mitochondrial DNA, and YDNA. Watch all of them or start with what you most want to learn now. And remember, as fantastic as this DNA series is, it’s only one of the many Premium video topics you’ll have exclusive access to with your Premium eLearning. Click here to learn more. 

The Author: Diahan Southard

The Author: Diahan Southard

Your DNA Guide

Diahan is Your DNA Guide at Genealogy Gems! She has worked with the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation, and has been in the genetic genealogy industry since it has been an industry. She holds a degree in Microbiology and her creative side helps her break the science up into delicious bite-sized pieces for you. She’s the author of a full series of DNA guides for genealogists.

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links and Genealogy Gems will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on these links (at no additional cost to you). Thank you for supporting Genealogy Gems!

How to Use the NEW MyHeritage DNA Chromosome Browser

The new MyHeritage DNA chromosome browser offers two different kinds of browsing–and a triangulation tool. Here’s what these tools are and how to work with them.

Just last year, if you had asked me if I thought anyone could catch AncestryDNA in their race to own the genetic genealogy market, I would have been skeptical. However, it is clear that MyHeritage intends to be a contender, and they are quickly ramping up their efforts to gain market share–and your confidence.

MyHeritage began 2018 by making a much needed change to their DNA matching algorithm, which had some errors in it. They were able to adjust it, and now it is humming right along, telling our second cousins from our fourth. Another development, launched in February, is the addition of a Chromosome Browser.

The new MyHeritage DNA Chromsome Browser

Much like you would browse the library shelves for the perfect book, or browse through the sale rack for a great bargain, you can use a Chromosome Browser to look through your chromosomes for the pieces of DNA you share with your genetic cousins. Chromosome Browsers can be everything from a fun way to review your genetic genealogy results, to a tool to assist in determining how you are related to someone else. Let’s go over three tips to help you make use of this new tool:

Navigating to the Chromosome Browser

There are actually two different kinds of Chromosome Browsers in MyHeritage: one to view only the segments you share with one match (the One-to-One Browser), and a browser where you can see the segments shared with multiple matches (the One-to-Many Browser).

To get to the One-to-One Browser, head over to your match page and find a cousin for whom you would like to see your shared DNA segments. Click on Review DNA Match, then scroll down past all the individual match information, past the Shared Matches and Shared Ethnicities until you see the Chromosome Browser.

Using the One-to-Many Chromosome Browser

To find the One-to-Many Chromosome Browser, you can use the main DNA navigation menu at the top of the MyHeritage homepage. Click on DNA, then on Chromosome Browser, as shown below.

In the One-to-Many Chromosome Browser you can compare yourself, or any account you manage, to anyone else in your match page. To choose a match to evaluate, just click on their name and they will be added to the queue at the top:

Clicking on Compare will then allow you to see the actual segments you share with each person:

In this One-To-Many view, each individual match gets their own line for each chromosome. Since we have added 7 people to the Chromosome Browser, there are seven lines next to each chromosome number. Each match not only gets their own line, but also their own color. So you can easily match up the lines on the chromosome to the match that shares that piece of DNA with you. For the majority of people the majority of the time, these Chromosome Browsers are just another fun way to visualize the connection you have with your DNA match. In the end, it doesn’t matter where you are sharing on the chromosome, just how much DNA you are sharing. You can obtain that information from your main match page and never look at this Chromosome Browser image, and still make fantastic genetic genealogy discoveries.

The Triangulation Tool

Another feature of the Chromosome Browser on MyHeritage is the Triangulation tool. To understand how this works, you first need to understand that you actually have two copies of each chromosome. Two copies of chromosome 1, two copies of chromosome 2, etc. One copy is from mom, and the other from dad. However, in the Chromosome Browser image, you see only one line for yourself (in grey). Therefore, when you see someone matching you on chromosome 14, for example, you don’t know if that person is matching you on the chromosome 14 you got from your mom, or the chromosome 14 you got from your dad.

Likewise, if you see two people whose shared piece with you looks to be in the same location on the same chromosome, you can’t tell if they are both sharing on the same copy of that chromosome, or if one match is related to your dad’s family, and the other match is related to your mom’s family. However, this is what the Triangulation tool does for us. It tells us if two (or three or four, etc.) matches are sharing on the same copy of the same chromosome. Be careful when you use this tool, though. Many erroneously assume that when they see a segment shared between multiple people, that indicates the presence of a recent common ancestor for all of those people. However, that is not always the case.

Start Using the MyHeritage DNA Chromsome Browser

Ready to start exploring what the MyHeritage DNA chromosome browser may tell you about your family history? You have two options. Click here to upload your autosomal DNA test results from another company to MyHeritage for FREE. Or click here to order a MyHeritage DNA test kit. Either way, you can start using all the great tools at MyHeritage DNA!

The Author: Diahan Southard

The Author: Diahan Southard

Your DNA Guide

Diahan is Your DNA Guide at Genealogy Gems! She has worked with the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation, and has been in the genetic genealogy industry since it has been an industry. She holds a degree in Microbiology and her creative side helps her break the science up into delicious bite-sized pieces for you. She’s the author of a full series of DNA guides for genealogists.

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links and Genealogy Gems will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on these links (at no additional cost to you). Thank you for supporting Genealogy Gems!

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