Genes Day Friday - Same Segment, More Matches

This has been a very enlightening Friday for me! I was disappointed to hear my one of my grandmother's samples had insufficient DNA for testing, and will need to be resubmitted. That means more waiting for the kit to arrive, then to ship back, and then to test. I'm trying to be patient, but it's not easy!

In the mean time, I've been going through my grandfather's autosomal DNA matches, and inviting them to share genome info. It's been really neat to go through and see where on his DNA these possible relatives match up. I haven't had much chance to correspond a lot with anyone yet, so no 'aha' moments or connections via paper trail to any other testers yet. But I have had 15 people so far agree to share data, which I don't think is too bad for only having had access to this for a week or two.


Chromosome 10 matches between
my grandpa and 3 others

I've been compiling a spreadsheet (yes, I track my genealogy data in spreadsheets) and found something very interesting - my grandfather shares the same segment of DNA with three other people! Same chromosome, almost exactly same length. How common is that? What's more the DNA in common has a cM of 12.1, 12.7, or 14.4, depending on the relative. According to FamilyTreeDNA, a cM of 10.0 or higher indicates conclusively that you share ancestry. It looks like there are 4 descendants of the same ancestor here, we just need to figure out where and how we connect. I emailed the three of them tonight, and hopefully we'll be able to start working on this soon. That's one thing I've really enjoyed doing in genealogy - teaming up with other researchers and working out a problem together. It's just fun, exciting, and rewarding all at the same time.

On the other testing fronts - still no results for my grandfather's Y-DNA and mtDNA tests, or my other grandmother's autosomal test. One grandmother submitted her mtDNA test, and I have the kit for the last one, I just need to get my grandma to take it. So for those tests, it's still a waiting game. But as more and more matches to my grandfather's DNA agree to share results, I'm hoping to come across similar situations, and keep building more connections and a larger family tree. That's what this is all about right?