Ancestry DNA chromosome painter

[peter]

Does anyone else have access to this new feature? It's in beta and whilst I can access it for some of the tests I manage it isn't currently available for all of them.

If you are fortunate enough to have been able to test both parents I'd be interested to know whether a comparison seems to makes sense.

EDIT: on reading the instructions more closely I discovered that only the Owner or Manager of a test can see the chromosome painter.

 

[PeterM]

Just found this under 'DNA Story'.

 

[Sue_3]

Just found this under 'DNA Story'.

Yes, I found this yesterday too. It isn't a lot of use to me as I cannot test either of my deceased parents and they both seem to have had very similar origins, according to the Ancestry analysis, so I don't know which is parent 1 or parent 2. If I could compare this information with my DNA matches then it could be VERY useful, as for a number of my matches I do know which of my parents - and grandparents - they are related to.

 

[peter]

If I could compare this information with my DNA matches then it could be VERY useful, as for a number of my matches I do know which of my parents - and grandparents - they are related to.

Unless you know which which bits of your DNA match your cousins I'm not sure it would help.

 

[Stuart]

On going to look, I find do I have this feature. But I don't see that it tells me anything useful, and I'm not convinced it will for anyone else either.

The context here is that I never took much notice of the "ethnicity" stuff since I know what it should be. All my father's known ancestors were born in Aberdeenshire or a neighbouring county. For my mother, three quarters of hers were born in Suffolk and the rest in the home counties. One partly "foreign" ancestor more than six generations back isn't likely to show up anyway

So when the latest version of Ancestry's numbers says I have 50% Scottish, all from parent two, and 43% English with the rest assorted Scandi, my reaction is just "yes - that looks right". I might add "why were your earlier efforts so far from that?", though I never recorded what those numbers were.

Now I'm told every chromosome pair has one that's painted as Scottish, and the other one is English except three of them Norewgian and the end of another Swedish/Danish - so what? Incidentally, does the position of the colours within that shared one mean anything? Ancestry's short FAQ says: "With this data, you can get a general feel for how recent your connections are to your ethnicity regions. The longer a segment (a single colored block) is for a region, the more recent your connection to that region may be", which seems to suggest it does.

 

[Sue_3]

Unless you know which which bits of your DNA match your cousins I'm not sure it would help.

Indeed, that's what I meant, perhaps poorly expressed. If Ancestry gave us a Chromosome browser that enabled us to compare ourselves with our matches, and not just compare our two (perhaps not clearly identified) parents, it would be very useful. I know we can do that on some other sites, but only for the matches that have tested with, or uploaded to, those sites.

 

[Heather]

I found this too, thanks. My Welsh percentage keeps increasing, now 40% even though the only Welsh person on my tree is my maternal grandfather. Knowing this I have concluded that my mother is parent 2. I then have English 36% which I understand and Scottish 22% which I don't understand as I have yet to find any Scottish connections, but by looking at this new information I can see that it is on my father's side, so maybe some help knowing that.

 

[peter]

My Welsh percentage keeps increasing, now 40% even though the only Welsh person on my tree is my maternal grandfather

Remember that you don't inherit equal amounts of DNA from each grandparent, so the percentage from your grandfather could be anywhere between 0% and 50% (though it's more likely to be somewhere in the middle than at the extremes).

Scottish 22% which I don't understand as I have yet to find any Scottish connections

Have you read what Ancestry say about unexpected Scottish DNA?

 

[peter]

Has everyone seen the example on the support page for Chromosome Painter? Very different from what I see!

 

[Heather]

Remember that you don't inherit equal amounts of DNA from each grandparent, so the percentage from your grandfather could be anywhere between 0% and 50% (though it's more likely to be somewhere in the middle than at the extremes)
Have you read what Ancestry say about unexpected Scottish DNA?

Thanks Peter that is very helpful I will keep that in mind. I haven't read about unexpected Scottish DNA, so I will have a look at that.

 

[PhilGee]

Has everyone seen the example on the support page for Chromosome Painter? Very different from what I see!

Did you expect a genuine example or a mock-up?

I'm not convinced it is at all accurate - for Chr 20 & 21 it is all Welsh for my father and "English/NW Europe" for my mother: all my "known" Welsh ancestry is through my maternal gt-grandmother. However, parts of north Somerset are included in the Ancestry "Welsh" region and I have paternal ancestors from that area ca. 1800!
For my mother's side there are 8 Chr all Welsh.
Whilst I have not found any ancestors outside England and Wales, I have a reason for accepting "Norway (paternal), Sweden & Denmark (maternal)" as the "ring finger" on both hands does not straighten due to Dupuytren's contracture ("Viking Finger") which is common in people with Northern European and Scandinavian ancestry.

 

[peter]

Did you expect a genuine example or a mock-up?

I'd be surprised if it wasn't a genuine example - probably an Ancestry employee.

I'm not convinced it is at all accurate - for Chr 20 & 21 it is all Welsh for my father and "English/NW Europe" for my mother: all my "known" Welsh ancestry is through my maternal gt-grandmother. However, parts of north Somerset are included in the Ancestry "Welsh" region and I have paternal ancestors from that area ca. 1800!
For my mother's side there are 8 Chr all Welsh.

Whilst Ancestry don't say who is Parent 1 and who is Parent 2, I'm guessing that in your case it was clear who was who (not so for me). However in compiling a report for each parent they will have examined each DNA segment and assigned it to one of the other - in effect, what we're now seeing are their 'workings'.

However, when Ancestry launched SideView it was with the proviso that "SideView™ technology groups matches with a precision rate of 95% for 90% of AncestryDNA customers". So even if you're in the 90% there could be one or two chromosomes that are round the wrong way. (You can see their press release here.)

people with Northern European and Scandinavian ancestry

I would have thought that most people of British origin have ancestors from those regions.

 

[Pauline]

I’m feeling deprived - I don’t have this additional new feature yet. However, I’m not sure how much help it will be when I do get it, as I have no idea which of my parents is which from their ethnicity breakdown.

 

[Stuart]

I'm not sure if that example is real, or even possible, but it would have to be someone with a very disparate set of ancestors indeed. So it's never going to be similar to the picture for those of us whose ancestors are, as far as we know, all from the British Isles or even from western Europe.

 

[PhilGee]

I'd be surprised if it wasn't a genuine example - probably an Ancestry employee.

I see it matches a "Darla Maclay" in the SideView introductory article!

 

[Mitch_in_Notts]

My (Adopted) Dads DNA percentages are 50% Scottish from his Father and 7% Scottish, 39% England/NW Europe and 4% Germanic Europe from his Mother.
The Chromosome result shows all bands Scottish for his Father. The longest Chromosome for his Mothers side is Germanic Europe! Needless to say I haven't managed to trace any ancestry for her outside of England, so the Scottish is a mystery never mind the strongest ethnicity being Germanic Europe according to Ancestry Chromosomes!

 

[peter]

The longest Chromosome for his Mothers side is Germanic Europe! Needless to say I haven't managed to trace any ancestry for her outside of England, so the Scottish is a mystery never mind the strongest ethnicity being Germanic Europe according to Ancestry Chromosomes!

If chromosome 1 (ie the longest one) is the only chromosome that has been identified as Germanic Europe then that fits with the 4% figure.

The only mystery is why neither my brother nor I have any DNA from Germanic Europe, since around 6% of our ancestors were German.

 

[Bob Spiers]

I came across Ancestry's Beta Chromosome Painter and trying to make head or tail of it -to use my wife's Northamptonshire vernacular- 'it does my head in". Never the fastest kid off the block (things have to grow on me) and in my senior years the growth has slowed somewhat. So to what I want to say.

I found the Overview Ethnicity breakdown helpful and as the 'give away' to Parent 1 and Parent 2 was easy as I only have Irish ancestry on my paternal side; So Parent 1 is paternal. But in the 'Painter' -and leaving aside the Sweden&Denmark and Norway 'purplish' colour allocations - that really leaves 4 shades of 'GREEN-GREENISH BLUE' to distinguish between #England and Northwestern Europe; #Scotland; #Ireland and #Wales. Apart from bright green 'E&NWE the others I find hard to distinguish and it is no good asking my wife as she suffers a green-blue colour blindness anyway, but I now find myself in the same position.

There certainly are no multi-coloured lines (as in the Ancestry sample referred to by others) and so I will endeavour to make head and tail of what the Painter is trying to tell me, and what colours apply to what region. I may well stay with the Ethnicity breakdown which at least made some sense.

 

[Stuart]

The colours Ancestry have given each of their population groups in Chromosome Painter don't seem to be fixed, which with 1500+ of them would be hard to do anyway. So, assuming they are picked just for your picture, to make it clearer, it's hard to see why they use such similar colours.

Fortunately there is a way to separate them: click on the names in the legend panel on the left and the colours will be turned on and off (greyed) accordingly.

I would also recommend looking at the ranges given for the groups' probabilities (or revisiting this). Click on each "ethnicity region" in the Ethnicity Estimate panel, to get the range. I think some here are believing too much of Ancestry's claims for this whole ethnicity thing, which is based on rather questionable assumptions, and seeing the ranges may calm that down a bit.

The numbers can still be a bit odd, of course. My 50% Scottish (all on my Dad's side) has a range of 34-50% - so they've picked a best estimate at one end of that range, for some reason. My England & Northwestern Europe figure of 43% becomes 35-56%, which looks plausible enough. But note that the small numbers have ranges almost that big, leading to a higher level of doubt for them.

So, I was a bit puzzled to see 6% Norwegian, and 1% Sweden & Denmark. Now I know the "Danes" who came to East Anglia were not all from Denmark, but I thought more were than were from Norway. The ranges I'm given for those are 0-15% Norway and 0-12% Sweden & Denmark. So anything or nothing, really.

 

[Stuart]

The colours Ancestry have given each of their population groups in Chromosome Painter don't seem to be fixed, which with 1500+ of them would be hard to do anyway. So, assuming they are picked just for your picture, to make it clearer, it's hard to see why they use such similar colours.

That's wrong - there are actually 77 regions; the 1500+ applies to their "DNA communities". But even 77 distinct colours would be hard to come up with.