Many people lately have been enjoying the use of Jonny Perl’s DNA Painter Tool. I have painted my chromosomes and wanted to look at my mother’s chromosomes.
Here are my results:
These are my 23 chromosomes plus my one X Chromosome. There is a bit of identified DNA on each chromosome except for number 21. The top bar represents my paternal side and the bottom represents my maternal side. The different colors represent various ancestors starting with my 2nd great grandparents. For example, the green represents my great grandparents James Hatley and Annie Snell. They had 13 children, so I have a lot of matches along that line.
Who to Map for My Mom?
For my mom I want to go to my great grandparent level or beyond. That is equivalent to my mom’s grandparents and beyond. That will in effect expand upon my maternal side matches and split them into my mom’s paternal and maternal sides.
Here is just my maternal side mapping:
That represents 22% of my maternal side. Because my mom gave me half of her DNA, I should be able to get her to a higher overall percent. Let’s see what percentage we can get Gladys up to.
Mapping Mom
As I am looking to map my mom, I will be basically looking at all the people that are 2nd cousins or further away to me. These would be her 1st cousins once removed or further away.
Here is my mom’s list at Gedmatch.
Hey, I’m at the top of my mom’s list. The green box represents people that I don’t want to map as they are too closely related (for example, niece and nephew, children).
Create a New DNA Painter Profile
At the top of the DNA Painter Page, I choose Profiles:
That shows that I have one Profile: me. I then add my mom, Gladys:
I’ll put in her name and that she is female. Then I choose Save and Start Painting. This gives me a blank sheet. As mom is predictably female, she has two X Chromosomes:
Look at Relationships
First I want to paint one of my mom’s top matches – Anita. She is a DNA match who lives in Latvia.
From this chart, Anita is a first cousin, twice removed. Anita is higher up on the list at Gedmatch than Catherine who is a 1st cousin, once removed. This Chart also gives the common ancestors. These are my mom’s grandparents with the last names Rathfelder and Gangnus.
Paint a Match
I’ll copy my mom’s match with Anita into the DNA Painter form:
The matches scrolled off the page, but they are there. I push the save button:
In the background there is a grey hatched area of the matches. DNA Painter does not yet know if these are maternal or paternal matches for my mom. They are paternal and I need to put in Anita’s name in the first box and the shared ancestors’ names in the second box. I’ll choose father’s side in the drop-down box and go with the suggested color.
This put the matches with Anita on the top which is the default paternal side. This blue represents my mom’s two paternal grandparents. We aren’t sure which – it would be one or the other. In more general terms, this would be DNA that my mom inherited from her dad.
Anita’s X Chromosome match with my mom
The X match is more interesting in a way. On my mom’s Gedmatch match list, I choose the hyperlinked X near Anita and get this:
The thing that is interesting about this match is that I am doubly sure that this is not a Rathfelder match. I am double sure because my mom’s dad is Alexander. Anita’s great-grandfather is Leonhard. These are two males. Neither of them received an X Chromosome from their dad as a son never gets an X Chromosome from his dad. That means that this X match can only represent my mother’s father’s mother, Maria E.L Gangnus born 1856. And that is a good thing. Whenever we can go from the general to the more specific in DNA or genealogy, that brings us one step forward.
Now I want to map the Anita’s X match with my mom. Here is Maria in green:
The Fun Statistics Button
Before I added the X Chromosome, Anita contributed to 5% of my mother’s Chromosomes:
I hit the little refresh button to the right of the orange above and my mom was still at 5%. However, this is what it shows for the paternal side:
I believe that this went from 9% to 10% of my mom’s paternal side when I added the X Chromosome. I like looking at these orange numbers, to see how I am progressing.
When I added this X Chromosome match with Anita, I had to add Anita in again. That means that I now have two entries for Anita in DNA Painter. One has common ancestors Rathfelder and Gangnus and the one on the X Chromosome has just Gangnus as a common ancestor.
Carolyn: My Mom’s First Maternal Match
Here is how Carolyn is related to my mom:
This is from a partial Nicholson Tree. However, Gladys and Carolyn need to also match on William Nicholson’s wife Martha Ellis. Both these people were born in Sheffield, England. Technically Gladys and Carolyn will be matching on either Nicholson or Ellis, but we won’t know which in most cases.
First, a Note on the X Chromosome
I was just mentioning the X Chromosome above. Here is how mom and Carolyn match on the X Chromosome:
The match with Carolyn is different than the match mom had Anita. Both the ancestors before the common ancestors are female in this case. That means that the X match could be either Nicholson or Ellis.
Painting Carolyn to My Mom
In Gedmatch, the results for the X Chromosome and the other 22 Chromosomes come out separately, but I want to combine them. So I will try to add them all together.
First I pick Paint a New Match at the main screen. Then I add the X match:
Right under that, I’ll add all the places Carolyn and Gladys match:
Here’s mom’s first maternal match:
I’m guessing that Carolyn might almost double my mom’s mapped DNA which is currently at 5%:
Not quite double digits, but pretty good.
Going Down the Gedmatch Match List
Adding my mom’s 1st cousin once removed, Catherine, get’s mom up to 12% mapped DNA. Judy brings in a new pair of ancestors: Jacob Lentz and Annie Nicholson.
Re-Keying the Key
Next I want to organize the key. I’ll move the Paternal ancestors to the top.
Then I’ll add a separator line. It will be after Maria in green, so I choose her. I choose Edit and then check this box:
Differentiating between the paternal and maternal is one of the most important things to determine in genetic genealogy, so this utility is important.
Mapping More Matches
The next match with my mom hasn’t gotten back to me. I know about where she fits in, but not for sure, so I’ll leave Kathy out for now.
I forgot to check my update button. Now mom is up to 15% mapped. I expect her maternal side to have more matches as she has Philadelphia relatives on her maternal side and her paternal side was from Latvia. However at this point, Gladys has 15% paternal and 14% maternal mapped. I expect that to change.
Joan has over 100 cM of matches with my mom. She is a 2nd cousin once removed on the Nicholson/Ellis Line. That brought my mom up 1% to 16% mapped. Things had to slow down at some point.
Two Matches Representing 1700’s Ancestors
Astrid’s match with Mom goes back to a German Colony in Latvia:
Hans Jerg married a Bittenbinder. Mapping Astrid/Rathfelder/Bittennbinder adds some rose color to the paternal side of Mom’s map:
Astrid added another 1% to my mom’s mapped DNA.
Nigel: A Match on Another 1700’s Couple
Nigel’s match with my mom goes back to 1765. Astrid’s match represented 1752.
I added Nigel in lilac. Then I moved the ancestral DNA his match represents down to the maternal side of the Map’s Key. By default, the new ancestors appear at the top of the key.
My Mom’s Percent DNA Mapped Vs My Maternal Percent Mapped
I put in the easy matches for my mom and only came up with 19% mapped. However, I have 22% of my maternal side mapped. Here is what I have for my maternal side:
I think I know why my percentages are not the same thing as my mom’s percentages. My mom’s chromosome is her maternal and paternal side which is a generation back further than what I am looking at. Another way to look at it is that her 19% is 19% of two copies of her chromosomes. I am only looking at one copy of my maternal chromosomes. That means that my mother is starting out with over twice as much DNA than I am. I say more than twice as much because she has two X Chromosomes compared to my one. Put another way, I have 22% of my maternal side mapped. That is roughly equivalent to 11% of all my mom’s mapped DNA.
More Numbers
I have mapped 19% of my mom’s DNA. She passed down half of her DNA to me. Actually, this is a little less than half as I only got one X Chromosome. As I have mapped 22% of my maternal chromosomes, that means, that I should be able to get near to 22% for my mom.
More Matches for Mom
As I look at my own maternal-mapped chromosomes, I see that I have mapped some X Chromosome that I don’t have for my mom. Also I have some John Lentz DNA.
More X DNA for Mom
At the top, I said that I wasn’t going to map close relatives. However, I will make an exception with Cindy. Cindy is my mom’s niece. The reason I want to map Cindy’s match is because her father Bob is my mom’s brother.
I thought I had a better photo. My mom is the oldest child with the curly hair. Bob is the baby. Bob got only one X Chromosome from his Lentz mom. She got her DNA from her two parents who were Jacob Lentz and Annie Nicholson.
Here is Cindy’s X match with my mom at Gedmatch:
I then map Cindy’s match to my mom’s map:
This match is perhaps not too meaningful. Cindy got her paternal X from her dad Bob. Bob in turn got his only X Chromosome from his mom. She got her DNA from her two parents Jacob Lentz and Annie Nicholson. However, those segments are mapped as a placeholder to remind me that those segments represent either Lentz or Nicholson. Also the breaks in the matches may indicate changes from Nicholson to Lentz DNA or the other way around.
Mapping John Lentz and Eliza
I’m going to switch back to my DNA Painter Profile to see this match. When I do that, and choose John Lentz/Eliza from the key, I see this:
This shows on my maternal Chromosome 2, I had a 16 cM match with Radelle. I also have her Gedmatch number written down, so I can look for that match on my mom’s Gedmatch match list. My mom’s match with Radelle is about twice the match that I have with Radelle:
Next I switch the profile back to my mom and paint in the Radelle/Lentz/Eliza DNA:
Finally, I need to put John Lentz on the bottom maternal part of the Key:
Add Beth from MyHeritage
My mom matches Beth at MyHeritage. They are 2nd cousins once removed. Beth matches on my mom’s Nicholson/Ellis Line. Here is the match at MyHeritage:
This should add some new DNA to my mom’s DNA map. At MyHeritage at the Chromosome Browser, I choose Advanced Options. The only advanced option is to download the DNA match which I did. At DNA Painter, I choose Paint a New Match and add Beth’s DNA match. Beth’s match on Chromosome 12 was new as I had no DNA match for my mom there before Beth.
If I choose Nicholson/Ellis on the DNA Painter Key and then choose Beth, I get this:
This shows that Beth added no new DNA on Chromosome 5, but added some gap DNA on Chromosome 6. Her match extended a match on Chromosome 8 and added new DNA on Chromosome 12.
Fixing a Mistake
In the image above, I just happened to hover over Chromosome 5 and it shows a match with Gladys. That is wrong as Gladys is my mom. This should be Carolyn. To fix this, I choose Nicholson/Ellis in the Key. At the top, I choose Gladys and get this screen:
I then chose Edit Match. I replaced Gladys’ name with Carolyn. That fixed the problem.
Here is where I am:
That about as far as I will get as my own maternal chromosomes are also at 22%.
Here is what my mom’s DNA Painted Map looks like:
As predicted, my mom has more maternal DNA relatives compared to paternal. However, given that the paternal side is from Latvia, I am happy with the matches that she does have.
Summary and Conclusions
- I was able to paint 22% of my mom’s chromosomes based on identified existing cousin matches. It would be nice to be at 25%.
- I have matches on all chromosomes except for the shortest one – 22.
- The colors could use a little work. They are a bit boring. The rose is close tot he brown and the light green does not show up well.
- Chromosome 18 appears to be the best mapped Chromosome.
- I was able to map the X Chromosome match my mom had with a niece because that niece is a daughter of my mom’s brother.
- I found a mistake and was able to fix it easily in DNA Painter.