Starting with myself, I went from being confused about how to represent my relatives to a neat clean view based on our shared DNA.
The first thing I did was to look at how ancestry sites are doing it. They use a crazy format called .ged that basically mixes a family tree together with anecdotes from your great-great-grandparent’s lives.
This is fine to try and see if I’m related to Napoleon. But, I don’t care! So, I scrapped this nonsense and started clean.
So, who do I share most DNA with?
I share 50% of my DNA with 7 persons: 3 children, 2 siblings, and 2 parents,
and 25% of my DNA with 9 persons: 5 cousins, 3 uncles, 1 grandparent.
Many in my family have obtained their DNA information and shared it with me. So, this is how complete my social DNA network is at 50% and 25% shared DNA
Neat right? And why is it useful? When I went to the genetic counselor after sequencing my genome (I won’t yet disclose why that was), having access to my family’s DNA was the difference between months of work and minutes to a definite answer.
So, part of two groups of under 10 people were enough. How deep can we go with folks we share 12.5% of our DNA with?
We need a lot of people to find out, are you in?
