I'm not sure how much of a reflection of reality this tool is giving me. Finally Ancestry has
released a Chromosome Painter but is it helpful in doing your genealogy? Howdy, I'm Andy Lee with
Family History Fanatics and today I'm going to be reviewing Ancestry's new Chromosome Painter.
Ancestry says it's Chromosome Painter "paints your DNA with your ethnicities showing where in
your DNA we found the regions that make up your ethnicity estimate. With this different view of
your ethnicity estimate, you can also see which biological parent your ethnicities came from."
Taking a look at this we can see here is Parent Number 1 the top and Parent Number 2 the bottom.
And again Ancestry does not label these as mother or father because that information is not coded in
your autosomal DNA. So you need to be able to use matches or other things to identify which
of these are your mother and father. One of the things that you'll notice is that as we go through
the different colors, and I don't have too many colors. But as we go through the different colors,
primarily it is affecting entire chromosomes. So you see here this purple goes across the
entire chromosome. This purple down here, again across the entire chromosome that's been tested.
We have this light blue right here, that again all across the chromosome. All across the chromosome.
In fact, as I look at this there is only one of the 44 chromosomes. Remember that's 22
chromosomes times 2, so 44 chromosomes. There's only one that actually is divided up into more
than one color. And that is Chromosome Number 5. It is some England, Northwest Europe, and
some Ireland. I believe that is. Yes! Now, when I first saw this I thought of it a little bit odd.
And this is because I was used to 23andMe. Now, 23andMe is what got me started on DNA testing. And
specifically it was the Chromosome Painting. So, if we go over to 23andMe, what we can see here is
something that may look similar. But you'll notice a little bit of difference. Particularly
when I highlight the different groups. Now, British/Irish- it says I'm 79%. So,
80 percent rounded up. But as we look at that, while there are several full chromosomes that are
that. There's also lots of chromosomes that are not. In fact. the majority of the chromosomes are
actually split up between this British/Irish and some other ethnicity result. French/German here.
You can see it is again split up. And then, we go to the broadly Northwest European. It looks
like they've actually categorized almost all of it except for this big chunk here on Chromosome
Number 7. And then you know some little chunks around. So, that's the first thing that I notice
about Ancestry's Chromosome Painter is they looks like they have a preference for painting
full chromosomes all the time. Now, in order to test this, I decided to take a look at a
friend of mines' whose Ancestry is primarily from sub-Saharan Africa. But she also has some European
influence in there as well. And what you can see with hers is it is actually quite different from
mine simply because she has all of these different groups from Africa that are within this. Now,
the major one is from Nigeria. And if we click on that this looks a lot more like what I expected
to see similar to what I saw with 23andMe. You can see that there are some full chromosomes but
there are parts that are broken up quite a bit. And as we go down and look at some of
these others, they're usually not going to be full chromosomes except if we're on some of the
small chromosomes. It's mainly going to be some of these broken segments all throughout the genome.
What can I deduce from this? Well, first thing I think I need to point out is that the countries
of Europe and primarily Northwestern Europe, Scandinavia, and the United Kingdom, France, and
Germany, and that. They're much more homogeneous. In other words people, from Scandinavia,
and the United Kingdom, and France, and Germany, look very similar when we're looking at a genetic
standpoint. Whereas people from Africam primarily Nigeria, Cameroon, the Ivory Coast, Senegal, Mali,
they are vastly different. Many people think that because they look very close together
on a map that they must be. But naturally, Africa is huge. And many of these places,
when we're talking about, say for instance the Southern Bantu people and the Ivory Coast. We may
be looking at a distance that is as far away as the east and the west coast of the United States,
as far away as Spain is from Moscow. Huge distances! Additionally these people in
Africa have been there for tens of thousands of years. And they've had tens of thousands of years
to actually separate themselves genetically into distinct groups. And so, I think it's much easier
with populations from Africa to be able to split everything out than it is with populations from
Europe. Because Europe's been populated for about 30-40,000 years. But the major parts of Europe and
the populations from them, really are ten thousand years or less that those groups have actually
been dividing and and trying to segregate. I guess you could say as far as genetically
from everybody else. So, this is encouraging that I'm seeing a lot of this breakdown in
the different groups from Africa with this friend's DNA. But again going back to my DNA,
I would have expected to actually see a little bit more breakdown rather than everything being
full chromosomes. Back to my DNA. And this is where it's going to get a little bit more
interesting and something else I want to bring up. I have my parents tested through Ancestry. So,
while this is a potential representation of my two parents and what part of their DNA
looks like. I should be able to see these same colors on these same chromosomes in each one of
my parents. Remember they pass down their DNA to me. And now, only half of it. But if for instance,
I have purple across this entire Chromosome Number 4 one of my parents should have purple
at least across one or parts of the the chromosome. In other words, it could be split up
into two parts- one on one chromosome and the rest on the other chromosome. But I would expect to see
purple represented across the entire boundary. Now, I've set this up so as I flip through you
have myself here. This is my mom right here. This is my dad right here. So, let's get started. And
let's actually start with Chromosome Number 4 because I was just talking about that. It's right
there for us. I have England and Northwestern Europe on one of those chromosomes and I have
Norway on the other one of those chromosomes. So, one of my parents has to have Norwegian
represented in their DNA on Chromosome Number 4. And they have to have England, Northwest Europe
represented in Chromosome Number 4. So, here is my mom and you'll notice here Chromosome Number
4 is all England/Northwestern Europe. Now, my mom is one generation closer to that ancestor that I
said I know is from Cornwall, England. Uust it was her grandfather actually. So, I would expect her
to have much more England than even I have. And you can see Chromosome Number 4, for her is all
England. So, going back to me, I could potentially say that this first part is my mom. In fact, I'm
going to go over here and I'm going to write 'Mom' on the top. Which means, this next one has to be
from my dad. Right? If this is working correctly, then this should be purple. Now, this is my dad.
It's not my mom. Here's my mom. Here's my dad. And we're looking at Chromosome Number 4.
And what you can see here on Chromosome Number 4, is there is no purple. There's no Norway.
It's just England/Northwestern Europe. So, does that mean this isn't really my dad? Well, no,
because we've actually looked at it from the other matching and, yes, this is absolutely my father.
So, in this case on Chromosome Number 4 it's sort of a bust. That Norwegian does not correlate
with what my parents' both had. Okay, Let's go and let's take a look at Chromosome Number 3,
right above it. Chromosome Number 3 has some Scotland and it has some Sweden/Denmark. So,
one of my parents has to have Scotland one of my parents has to have Sweden/Denmark.
Let's go take a look. If I look at my mom, all right we have Germanic Europe. Now,
Germanic Europe could include Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. So, I'm going to go out on a limb
here and I'm going to say that this bottom one here represents my mom. Okay. That would mean
then my dad has to be this top one. And this top one is Scotland. Good thing that I know is
my dad actually has some Scottish heritage. So, let's take a look. And what do we have? Well,
if I just go and I click on Scotland. I can see nothing on Chromosome Number 3. So, again,
that's two chromosomes that we've had at least one potential error, if you want to say, or
problem from that. Let's go and let's take a look at another chromosome to see if we can suss this
out. Let's go down here to Chromosome Number 14. We have a purple and a green. Now, the purple is
Wales and the green is England/Northwest Europe. So, going on with my mom first. Going to 14.
She has Wales and Ireland. So, I have Wales there. I could go out on a limb and I can say this
represents my mom here. And then, I can go to my dad and on 14 what do we have? We have Wales and
we have Ireland. We got a little problem. Again, because I don't have Ireland for the other one
and my dad was the Wales then my mom would have to be Ireland. But I don't have Ireland. Again,
this I'm going to say is another bust. And that is what I want to really focus on here is.
This is one- it's still in its beta phase. But two, ethnicity estimates by themselves
are inexact. Although they may appear to be somewhat exact, it is based on the reference
population they have and the size of the database that they have. Now, in this case, when we're
trying to take my DNA and separate it out to show a representation of my father and my mother's DNA
that adds one more step to the complexity to that. And that is why we get the results that
we're seeing here where I am not represented appropriately with my parents in this case. So,
next I wanted to look at another thing. And this is because what Ancestry says is they're looking
at your DNA matches and what segments you share with relatives. Well, in their match list you
can go in and say that, "hey, this is some of my mother's side. This is my father's side." And they
can actually start to divide out matches onto your mother's and your father's side, which is great!
In this case, I've brought up somebody this is an uncle of mine who has not done any of
that in their match list. So, if you go to their match list it doesn't say this is the paternal
this is the maternal anything like that. So, it doesn't identify the relative side.
All they have is the matches, and yet, we still have a chart that is very similar here to the
other ones. It's not as simple as just saying Ancestry's using matches and your relatives.
Because in this case, Scott here does not have any known relatives according to Ancestry. He has not
identified any of them but they're still able to separate these out. Now, if we look at how this
lines up with a known relative, here is a known relative. And we can see some similarities. So,
for instance on Chromosome Number 1, just to start off with we have Germanic Europe
and we have Norway which I'm saying is pretty close to Germanic Europe. If we look at some
others that are similar between these two. And I'm just going to flop between them.
We can go down here to Chromosome Number 8 there is an Ireland.
And you'll notice there there is an Ireland between those. So, as far as how it's dividing up
between these two very closely related people, it looks like it's dividing it up roughly the same.
However once I add in some of those other concerns that I had with it, I'm not sure how much of a
reflection of reality this tool is giving me. For instance, I'm not going to pretend that
I'm not related to my dad because the chromosomes didn't match up all the way. So, what I want
you to get out of this is. This new tool from Ancestry is okay. It gives you some information,
but based off of the actual DNA from other close relatives of mine, I don't think it is near as
accurate even as what 23andMe has right. Now, Ancestry does say that this is just in beta.
They've just come out with this. They're going to work on improving this. So, I'll be looking
to see if it is going to actually change in the future. And what kinds of things do I expect to
see from that? Well, first off I expect to see a more breakup of the chromosomes. In other words,
segments from different areas around the world across your whole genome rather than
full chromosomes almost all the time. The other thing I expect to see is that between parents
it's actually representative between them. So, if I have a chromosome that it says is from Ireland
I expect to see that represented in one or both of my parents. So, is this a tool you can use
for genetic genealogy. Well. Right now? No. I don't think so. In fact, most ethnicity tools
are not going to be good for genetic genealogy. There's a few very specific circumstances where
they may be. but this is not one of them. I would play with this tool. Have fun, but
recognize that this is going to have to change if it is going to be more of a reflection of reality.
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