My Son’s AncestryDNA Results Are In

I recently got an email saying my son JJ’s DNA results were in. JJ shows this on his main AncestryDNA page:

There is a third box for DNA Circles, but those take a while to form after JJ’s DNA is linked to a tree. Here is how JJ compares to his sister Heather:

Both JJ and Heather come out as mostly England, Wales and Northwestern Europe. However, JJ’s #2 Ethnicity is Eastern Europe and Russia and Heather’s #2 is Germanic Europe. Another thing that stands out is that JJ has about 150 more 4th cousin or closer matches.

JJ and Heather’s Ethnicity

One would think that the ethnicity would come out the same for Heather and JJ as siblings, but it doesn’t. Here is what JJ shows:

JJ shows 3% Baltic within the larger Eastern Europe and Russia.

Heather doesn’t show the 3% Baltic but has 3% France instead:

The overall effect is the same.

JJ and Heather Each Have One SubRegion of England

These are subtle differences. JJ has Yorkshire & Pennines within Northern England and the Midlands:

Heather has the SubRegion of Northern England & the Midlands, but doesn’t have it broken down further like JJ has:

That means that while JJ and Heather both have the subregion: Northern England & the Midlands, JJ has the sub-sub region of Yorkshire & Pennines.

JJ and Heather At Gedmatch Genesis

As siblings, JJ and Heather match each other in a way that they match no one else. Here is how JJ and Heather compare to each other on Chromosomes 19-21:

We each have a male and female copy of our chromosomes. However the results don’t distinguish which is which and combine the two. On the bottom of each chromosome above is a blue or black region. Blue is where JJ and Heather match each other and black is where they don’t match. On the top part, there is either green, red or yellow. Red is where there is no match. The yellow above the blue is called a half match also known as an HIR. The green is called a Fully Identical Region (or FIR).

What Do These Three Regions Mean?

No match means no match. However, a good way to look at this is in terms of grandparents. JJ and Heather got their DNA from their four grandparents: Hartley, Rathfelder, Jarek and Cavanaugh.

  • No Match – An example would be if JJ got his paternal DNA From Hartley and maternal DNA from Jarek in a no match region, that would mean that Heather must have gotten her paternal DNA from Rathfelder and her maternal DNA from Cavanaugh
  • HIR – These regions are a little trickier. This means that if JJ and Heather both got their paternal DNA from Hartley and JJ got his from Jarek, then Heather got her maternal DNA from Cavanaugh in that half matching region.
  • FIR – This means that if JJ got his DNA in this region from Hartley and Jarek, then Heather also would have to have gotten her DNA from Hartley and Jarek.

Visual Phasing for JJ and Heather

Visual Phasing is more difficult for two siblings than for three or more, but let’s try it on Chromosome 19. First I put some information onto a spreadsheet, but it is just a place for phasing:

In the middle no match, I represented the four grandparents as four different colors:

There looks like there may be a tiny match in the middle of the non-match, but I am ignoring that for now.

Cheating on the Rathfelder Side

JJ and Heather’s Rathfelder grandmother has been tested so this should be a big clue. Here is how JJ and Heather match their paternal grandmother:

What does this mean? This means that Heather matches her paternal grandmother on the whole length of the Chromosome. Again, I’m ignoring the non-match in the pink area (called the centromere).

In the chart above, I had Heather’s paternal as blue in the middle region. Let’s call blue Rathfelder.

 

The places where I have the vertical lines in the spreadsheet above correspond the changes in the ways that JJ and Heather match each other. These are called crossovers. That means that at these spots the DNA that they got from one grandparent will cross over to the DNA that they got from another one. These crossovers are either maternal or paternal.

Already, I also know that JJ’s Yellow will be Hartley. That is his only other choice for a paternal grandparent. Next I put the JJ’s Rathfelder DNA in:

Now JJ has two paternal crossovers. His paternal DNA goes from Rathfelder to Hartley and then back to Rathfelder. JJ’s crossover is at 7 Million, because that is where the DNA match with is Rathfelder grandmother stops.

Next, because JJ has a paternal crossover at position 46, that means that he probably doesn’t have a maternal crossover at the same spot. Because of that, I’ll move JJ’s green DNA a little to the left and all the way to the right:

On the right hand side there is a half match. That half match is blue, so the orange can extend to the right on Heather’s maternal side:

Using the same logic for the small segment on the left, I can move the orange a little way to the left:

 

Now I am stuck on the left HIR segment. I don’t know if the maternal crossover goes to Heather or to JJ. If it goes to Heather, then that means that the left maternal segment for JJ will be green. If JJ has the crossover, it will be orange. A maternal cousin match could solve this.

Painting JJ’s Chromosomes

I’ll come back to visual phasing later. Now I’d like to paint JJ’s chromosomes. I had painted Heather’s previously. This shows Heather’s known maternal matches on her Jarek side:

These appear to be four siblings or close relatives. They are not relatives that Heather knows, but relatives with known Jarek ancestors. I could use this information for visual phasing as these chromosomes should be easier to visually phase.

The Same Matches But Matched To JJ

Back To Visual Phasing

JJ has a pretty good match on Chromosome 18, so I’ll try that one next:

Here we have almost the same scenario as in Chromosome 19, except that there is one more crossover on the right. I put in numbers at 9.8 and 53 to give a general idea of where we are. These correspond to where JJ and Heather match each other.

Here is how JJ and Heather’s paternal Rathfelder grandmother match them on Chromosome 18:

This time JJ gets a full dose of Rathfelder DNA.

 

I put in Heather’s Rathfelder DNA also.

Next, I want to visually phase Heather and JJ’s first maternal side DNA. Actually, I phased it on Chromosome 19, but I couldn’t identify it due to lack of DNA matches with known ancestry. Now we can do that. My guess is that green will be Jarek and orange will be Cavanaugh. By eye it looks that way.

JJ’s match with one Jarek descendant goes from 33 to 53.8, so that is the case.

I filled in the yellow Hartley for Heather as it should go up to where Heather matches her Rathfelder grandmother. Now I am stuck, but I have identified a Cavanaugh segment for Heather based on JJ’s Jareck DNA.

Chromosome 4 – Some Cavanaugh DNA for JJ

From DNA Painter, here are JJ’s Jarek DNA matches:

Here are Heather’s Jarek DNA matches:

Heather has extra Jarek matches that JJ doens’t have. That means that JJ probably has Cavanaugh DNA where Heather has her first two Jarek DNA matches.

Unfortunately, Chromosome 4 is longer and will have more crossovers:

This time I’ll start at the FIR. That means that JJ and Heather have the match on the same two grandparents on their paternal and maternal sides. I’ll have to switch the colors to keep them consistent. I said that JJ should be going from Cavanaugh to Jarek:

Here is JJ’s first identified maternal crossover.

Next, I’d like to add in the Rathfelder DNA:

The blue is Rathfelder. The matching segments information is how Heather and JJ match their grandmother. This is the same as the blue Rathfelder segments above. Where there isn’t blue Rathfelder DNA, I have put in yellow Hartley DNA.

Heather’s first Jarek descendant match goes from 85M to 109M:

At this point, I am stuck again:

There is a maternal crossover at 85, but I can’t tell if it belongs to JJ or Heather.

A Spreadsheet For JJ and Heather Using Gedmatch Genesis

At Genesis, I used JJ’s and my own DNA to make two more kits for JJ. One has an M1 designation and one is P1 for maternal and paternal. Genesis has a utility called Segment Search. I’ll use this once for JJ’s maternal matches and once for his paternal matches.

JJ’s Maternal Matches

Here are some of JJ’s maternal matches. I downloaded about 1,000 of them:

I made them pink for maternal. The green matches are the ones over 15 cM. JJ’s largest match above is with Heather. Note that JJ has maternal matches on Chromosome 4 between 80 and 89M. That means that he should not have a maternal crossover at 85M. That means that Heather should have the maternal crossover at 85M. Let’s look at Heather’s maternal results next.

Heather’s Maternal Matches at Genesis

Here are Heather’s Chromosome 4 maternal matches:

Notice that Heather has no matches going through position 85. Actually, Heather has matches going up to 84.3 and then starting again at about the same spot or at 85M. This tells me that Heather has a maternal crossover where I thought.

If I did this right, I should find Cavanaugh ancestor matches for Heather and JJ in their orange areas and Jarek ancestor matches in their green areas of Chromosome 4. Unfortunately, Heather and JJ have small matches in their orange areas which means that the relationships represented by those matches could be quite distant.

Near position 14, there aren’t a lot of matches, so I would be guessing more than usual there as to where the crossover goes. What about the right side of Heather and JJ’s Chromosome 4? First I need to figure out where the crossover is. For that I need to look at how JJ and Heather match each other at full resolution:

Each  ^ is 1M, so the change from all green to more yellow is at about 167.6M. Again, neither JJ nor Heather have good matches in that area, so I can’t tell where their maternal crossover is using that method.

Summary and Conclustions

  • I started looking at JJ’s AncestryDNA test results. I first compared JJ’s ethnicity with what his sister Heather showed. JJ shows a more detailed sub-region in England compared to Heather. JJ shows a Baltic region that Heather doesn’t show and Heather shows a France Region that JJ doesn’t have. The overall effect is the same, but the smaller details vary a bit.
  • I looked at how JJ and Heather compare to eatch other with HIRs, FIRs and no-match areas. Using these, I was able to start to visually phase Heather and JJ. I haven’t been able to identify matches along JJ and Heather’s Cavanaugh maternal grandparent side, so that made the phasing a little more difficult. JJ and Heather’s paternal side is already phased by comparing their results to their Rathfelder grandmother.
  • I downloaded JJ and Heather’s maternal matches from Gedmatch Genesis. Some of these matches were helpful in assigning maternal crossovers for their visual phasing maps.
  • Some other things that I could do would be AutoClustering JJ’s AncestryDNA results, more DNA Painting and more match identification. I would still like to figure out at least one match on JJ or Heather’s Cavanaugh side.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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