Howdy, I'm Andy Lee with Family
History Fanatics.
And today, we're going to be
going over a tool on Family Tree
DNA and that is the Chromosome
Painter.
Let's head on over there and
see how you can use this.
Now, the first thing when we're
looking at the homepage is
you'll notice that there are
two similar-sounding tools.
There's the Chromosome Browser
and there's the chromosome
painter.
We're going to focus on the
Chromosome Painter, today,
which has to do with your
admixture or ethnicity
or heritage results,
depending how you use that
term. Clicking on this,
it's going to go to the
Chromosome Painter and it's
going to show your chromosomes
divided
out by segments that are
associated with specific
areas of the world.
Now, you'll notice here on Family
Tree DNA mine is very blue.
In fact,
that is really the only color
except for this little tiny
bit of light blue here.
And that is because they have
divided up their Chromosome
Painting into what they
call Super Populations.
You really have two populations
Super Populations and continents.
So if I move over to continent
it's basically the same thing.
It's just included that Baltic
into it now and so everything is
all one and that is because my
ancestry is pretty homogeneous.
Most of my ancestors that I can
trace are actually from England
with some in to Germany and
France and the Netherlands all
northern Europe for
the most part.
And that's exactly what's
being reflected.
Let me go back to the
Super Populations.
And I'm going to click on this
'Help' up in the corner that is
being hidden by my
head right now.
And that is going to give
us an idea of what this
Super Population is.
If I go down here to
Super Populations and continents,
I can see your Super Populations
and continental regions are
determined by the results of
your Family Finder test and
coincide with your
genetic makeup,
which is provided to
you in My Origins.
So that is a separate tool,
the My Origins tool.
So let's go and just take a look
at the version three population
clustering and learning center
for the My Origins tool so we
can understand what is meant
by this super population.
We have these population
clusters,
and I'm just going to scroll
down; and we can see their map of
where all of their different
population clusters are.
And this is really neat.
As far as seeing it,
you can see actually in Europe,
there are several,
even though on mine,
it was just showing one major
color with one little
minor color involved there.
But as we go down further,
we can see- okay, here's,
where they explain the
continental level populations,
the super populations,
and the population clusters.
First off, continental,
it should be pretty
self explanatory.
We're talking about continents,
and in particular,
they're a main region in which
there are one or more
Super Populations. Okay,
so then we go down to
the Super Populations,
and this is the region in which
one or more population clusters
are found. So basically,
we have the continental region,
which is made up of
Super Populations,
and Super Populations are made
up of population clusters.
This is the nomenclature that
Family Tree DNA is using.
As we scroll down further,
we can see a list of continents,
Super Populations,
and population clusters.
So, just starting in Africa.
Africa would be-
Continent.
There is Central African,
East African, Eastern Sahel,
horn of Africa,
Rainforest Forager, and
South Africa, West Africa.
And each one of those may have
one or more population clusters.
So in this case of Europe,
let's scroll down and see
what is in Europe.
In Europe is the continent level
and we can see that Baltic is a
super population that is just
made up of the Baltic.
Then the other one that I
had was Western Europe.
And you can see that Western
Europe is made up of four
population clusters central
Europe, England,
Wales and Scotland,
Ireland and Scandinavia.
And that matches all of my known
ancestry as far as where almost
every single one of my ancestors
is from one of those.
So that is what is being shown
here on this is the continental
level or
the Super Populations level.
It does not go down to the
population clusters,
although the population clusters
are listed here below each one
of the Super Populations.
Now, a couple of things with this
that we can do. First off,
we see that we have 22 of
our autosomes there,
so it does not include your
sex chromosomes,
the X and the Y.
We can switch it from English
to Spanish. Now,
I'm not sure if they're going to
have more languages available
in the future,
but right now, you have the
option of changing it between
English and Spanish.
We can download the segments,
and by clicking on this,
it's going to ask us where
we want to save a file,
and then we can save that file.
There is a filter here.
Now, the filter has got a couple
of different options.
First, you can see
up at the top here,
there is the portrait view
and the landscape view.
If I click on the
landscape view,
I have changed how these
are displaying.
So, instead of going from
top to bottom,
I now have these going
from left to right.
You can see there's 1, 2,
3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10,
11, 12. And it goes all
the way over. Now,
depending on your screen,
this is one thing to be aware of
is the button to go right and
left is in the middle of that.
But if you're looking at some of
these smaller ones on the end,
you might not see that button.
And so you'll just have to
scroll up to get to
Next on the filter, as we go down,
there is the preference of
whether you prefer to show the
Super Populations or the
continent first.
It's default set to
Super Populations, but you can
change that to the preference
of continent and be able
to change it back to
Super Populations, it's fine.
You can also elect which of your
Super Populations to show.
So in this case,
I have both Western Europe
and Baltic selected.
So if I click on the
Western Europe,
so it's not showing anymore.
I can go, and I see that
everything is now grayed out.
So if I just search over
here there is my little bit of
Baltic that it's showing.
And that's the only little
segment that I have on mine.
Of course,
your chromosomes may be
different because the
populations that your ancestry
is from is most likely
different from mine.
Go back to the filter.
There's also this option to show
trace results only. Now,
trace results are really those
segments that are probably
smaller than what their
threshold for calling it that
certain population cluster is.
But let's just take
a look and see what trace results I have.
Now, I'm showing here actually one
other little bit of Baltic
on chromosome number 6.
I'm going to take off
the trace results
and that's showing that same one
on chromosome number 6.
And that so that is because this
Baltic is considered
less than 1%.
So it's really just below
their threshold. Now,
as you're looking at this,
one of the things you may
be seeing is, hey,
there's some gray spots here.
So, right at the beginning here,
there's this gray spot on
chromosome number 1.
On chromosome number 6,
there was a little gray spot on
9, there's some gray spots.
And you may be wondering, okay,
what is up with those?
Well, there's two things that could be
going on. First off,
in several of these,
for instance,
when you have both of
the pair
chromosomes that have that gray,
that is indicating that those
are areas where really
no SNPs were tested.
And so no evaluation of that
area can be determined. Now,
these regions on 13 through
15, 21 and 22,
and then back here on chromosome
number 9,
those are actually pretty
typical across all of the
different companies.
They don't test
in those regions.
On the other hand,
this one on chromosome
number 6,
you'll notice it's only on
one of the chromosomes.
More than likely,
that is a spot that is
ambiguous. In other words,
the makeup of the SNPs that are
in there might be indicating
multiple different population
clusters,
or they might not be matching
with any population cluster to
the degree that Family
Tree DNA wants.
And so they don't report
it as
belonging to any one of those
populations.
Now, the next part of this tool is
this Detailed Segments.
And if we click on this,
what it is now going to be
showing us is basically the
exact same information,
except in a table format.
So you can see here-
mine, of course,
is all Western Europe.
But you'll notice that, hey,
it's showing the different
segments on each one of
these chromosomes.
And that is because we have
a pair on each one.
So you'll notice- let's just
use Western Europe here on
chromosome number 2.
It shows two of these that are
spanning the exact same place.
That's because there's a
pair of chromosomes.
So chromosome number 2 has one
for my mother and one
for my father.
And both of those are showing
Western Europe across the
entire chromosome.
On this page we can
do different things to
change up what is being shown.
So we can be clicking
on these arrows,
which will resort this by
whichever one we have there.
So, for instance,
this might be the haplotype, or
the chromosome, or the super
population. We can sort by the
start position. But again,
this is not going to just
be chromosome one.
You'll notice here it's now
starting with chromosome
number 17,
because that had the smallest
place where the start was.
We could do this by the
end location as well,
and we could do it by the cM,
the centimorgans.
If I scroll over here
all the way,
that last column that wasn't
showing up mostly is centimorgans.
And so I could actually see what
the smallest or the largest
of my segments is. Now,
since I have primarily this
Western Europe ancestry,
you're not seeing segments that
are much smaller than the
entire chromosome.
So all of my big segments are-
really full chromosomes-
that are being shown.
Now, I typically don't use the
Chromosome Painter so much for
any kind of genealogical
research just because it's very
limited as far as the
information that is.
And it is probably the most
unreliable as far as any of the
information you can
get out of DNA.
But it actually is
the reason why I first tested on
DNA is to get a Chromosome
Painting from a different
company.
And I like the looks of them,
particularly for those people
who have this really
varied ancestry
and seeing how that DNA has all
mixed together just through
the color variation.
You see with Family Tree DNA,
you're not going to
see that as much,
because they only show
Super Populations and the
continental level.
They don't show those individual
population clusters.
You'd have to go to the MyOrigins
tool on Family Tree DNA
to see how much is in each one
of those population clusters.
I hope this video was helpful
for you to understand how to
use the Chromosome Painter.
And if you'd like to watch
something else on DNA,
then check out this
video to my right.