Friends of DNA Science

Below are some sites that are doing excellent work. Each is providing very helpful information or tools to advance our capabilities in genetic genealogy.

Genetic Affairs

Clustering your matches is one of the most important steps that you can take when using DNA to figure out or corroborate your family tree. Evert-Jan Blom of Genetic Affairs is the creator of AutoClusters, which you might have seen at MyHeritage since 2019. DNA-Sci.com provided the probability data for the new AutoKinship tool at Genetic Affairs, which amazingly generates family trees showing the most likely ways you’re related to your DNA matches.

GEDmatch

There are quite a few sites for DNA matching and other tools. GEDmatch has far and away the best tools out of all of them, including some that can’t be found anywhere else. If you sign in to the new version (rather than classic) and then click on “Relationship Probability,” you’ll be using a tool developed at DNA-Sci.com. Also, the AutoKinship tool, which was developed at Genetic Affairs and is only available for Tier 1 GEDmatch users, uses the same probability data.

Graphs for Genealogists

Use network graphs to solve your complicated genetic genealogy queries. Progress is even being made on endogamy at Graphs for Genealogists.

DNA Favorites

Author and speaker Richard Hill covers just about everything at his excellent site at DNA Favorites.

HAPI-DNA

The most advanced peer-reviewed genetic genealogy research in the world is happening at HAPI-DNA. Are you paying attention to it? You can’t be an advanced genetic genealogist without digging deep into HAPI-DNA and DNA-Sci.

Your DNA Family

Your DNA family is a new website that recently launched and will provide you with many features, including for your matches and segment-level data, triangulation, family trees, and collaboration with your matches.

Patricia Coleman Genealogy

The site Patricia Coleman Genealogy is a great place for genetic genealogists to learn how to use the most advanced tools available, including an article on AutoKinship, mentioned above.

Genie1

You’ll find a great article on X chromosome inheritance, which would be a good thing to read before diving into the only ranges of shared X-DNA available.

Kitty Cooper

Kitty Cooper’s blog is the place to go when you want to start learning about genetic genealogy.

DNA Painter

With my personal family mysteries being pretty far back in my tree, for years I’ve been keeping track of every distinct segment I can identify on both my paternal and maternal chromosome copies. I’ve always done this with text files. But DNA Painter makes it simple and more appealing by giving  you wonderful visualizations of your chromosomes and segments. The talking heads are wrong when they say the only tool you could ever need is shared matches. One would have to live in a close family mystery bubble to believe that. Jonny Perl has also created a very important tool called the Distinct Segment Generator, which will help you take full advantage of siblings’ kits.