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I'm still hoping against hope that Ancestry will eventually release a chromosome browser. They break all kinds of other "privacy issues" so why is this different? You can find a parent, sibling, child through their DNA test, and a lot more. Why your matching segment data is still off-limits is a mystery to me. I haven't met anyone yet who uses them specifically because they don't want their matching segments revealed to their matches. About 95% of users seem only interested in their ethnicity report and wouldn't know what to do with a chromosome browser.
I recall someone saying it had to do with medical stuff - if you know you share a certain portion of a certain chromosome with someone, and you really dug into it, you could figure out which medical issues are associated with the SNPs found on that segment and therefore what they might be prone to. It's ridiculous because it wouldn't be easy or obvious and what motivation would your DNA matches have to do that? It's meaningless to them. Plus, it's not diagnostic anyway. It's never been a problem at any other DNA company but if they really wanted to cover their own butts, they could just offer it as an opt-in with a warning so people are informed and it's on them if they opt-in. But nope, they have to be stubborn.
Personally, I think it has more to do with them not wanting to confuse customers and make things too complicated for them to understand. Because like you say, most of them are only interested in their ethnicity report, they wouldn't know what to do with a chromosome browser so it would probably confuse them and then their support would have to answer a hundred questions and they'd probably still be confused.
That said, most of the time I don't find a huge need for a chromosome browser. Despite the lack of one, AncestryDNA has proven to overwhelmingly be the most useful site for DNA.
I recall someone saying it had to do with medical stuff - if you know you share a certain portion of a certain chromosome with someone, and you really dug into it, you could figure out which medical issues are associated with the SNPs found on that segment and therefore what they might be prone to. It's ridiculous because it wouldn't be easy or obvious and what motivation would your DNA matches have to do that? It's meaningless to them. Plus, it's not diagnostic anyway. It's never been a problem at any other DNA company but if they really wanted to cover their own butts, they could just offer it as an opt-in with a warning so people are informed and it's on them if they opt-in. But nope, they have to be stubborn.
Personally, I think it has more to do with them not wanting to confuse customers and make things too complicated for them to understand. Because like you say, most of them are only interested in their ethnicity report, they wouldn't know what to do with a chromosome browser so it would probably confuse them and then their support would have to answer a hundred questions and they'd probably still be confused.
That said, most of the time I don't find a huge need for a chromosome browser. Despite the lack of one, AncestryDNA has proven to overwhelmingly be the most useful site for DNA.
I think their ethnicity algorithms are far more difficult to understand than a chromosome browser, which takes only a few seconds to understand: "These are the segments of DNA you and your match inherited from a common ancestor(s)." In fact I think it would make the information they already provide ("208 cM across 11 segments"--huh?) easier to understand by providing a visual.
I'm addicted to chromosome mapping on DNA Painter. When I discover my genealogical connection to a match, I upload their matching segment data there and label it according to the ancestor. It has been extremely valuable in helping to identify the correct relationships. I can track individual segments through several generations.
I'm annoyed with Ancestry's ThruLines since they use bogus ancestors that other people have copied into their trees (since they can't know the difference) and don't let you delete them.
I'm still hoping against hope that Ancestry will eventually release a chromosome browser. They break all kinds of other "privacy issues" so why is this different? You can find a parent, sibling, child through their DNA test, and a lot more. Why your matching segment data is still off-limits is a mystery to me. I haven't met anyone yet who uses them specifically because they don't want their matching segments revealed to their matches. About 95% of users seem only interested in their ethnicity report and wouldn't know what to do with a chromosome browser.
Does it have to do with Timber as well and imputed matches that Ancestry uses?
I am not an expert, but my guess would be a chromosome browser showing exact segment matches would be far more prone to error with the imputed matching system. Most people who use Chrome browsers do so to triangulate segments, and thus find the common ancestors. Would that work with Timber?
I think their ethnicity algorithms are far more difficult to understand than a chromosome browser, which takes only a few seconds to understand: "These are the segments of DNA you and your match inherited from a common ancestor(s)."
Yeah, but then they won't know what to do with that, or how to triangulate, etc.
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I'm addicted to chromosome mapping on DNA Painter.
Most people definitely won't know how to do that, lol. I did a little bit of that with matches from other companies but it ultimately wasn't very useful because there's so few matches at 23andMe I can identify since they don't have trees, and MyHeritage's database is smaller.
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I'm annoyed with Ancestry's ThruLines since they use bogus ancestors that other people have copied into their trees (since they can't know the difference) and don't let you delete them.
Not having the option to ignore or dismiss ThruLines suggestions is annoying, but ThruLines automatically does what I have been manually doing for a long time - building on a match's tree to find our common ancestor. Obviously, trees aren't always right but most of my Thrulines I can verify, and it is much faster at finding possible connections than I was doing it manually. I have several hundreds of matches I've confirmed a MRCA with at AncestryDNA, but only 21 from MyHeritage, a measly 7 from 23andMe, and 5 from FTDNA. I also have broken down several brick walls with my AncestryDNA matches (none with other companies), and identified my grandfather's bio father at AncestryDNA (though it was with the help of Y-DNA). You can triangulate segments all you want, if you have no way to identify the source of those segments, it's not of any use. And for that, you need trees. And Ancestry, even with all the errors in so many trees, not only has the biggest source for trees but also the biggest source for the genealogy records required to confirm or disprove those trees.
I'm annoyed with Ancestry's ThruLines since they use bogus ancestors that other people have copied into their trees (since they can't know the difference) and don't let you delete them.
I’m more annoyed at the filter in Ancestry Thrulines. For example, my filter currently shows that I have 6 ancestors with new DNA matches. I looked at each of the 6 ancestors, and for each had to expand several generations to find the new match in their line. When I finished, I discovered they all led to the same DNA match. There was no way of knowing this without expanding each of the 6 ancestral lines.
What a waste of time! The software could have simply posted a link to the page of one new DNA match where I could quickly have seen how we were related via the “common ancestor” feature.
(I say new DNA match but really mean new match discovery as Ancestry may only recently been able to tie an existing match to one of my direct direct ancestors.)
Does it have to do with Timber as well and imputed matches that Ancestry uses?
I am not an expert, but my guess would be a chromosome browser showing exact segment matches would be far more prone to error with the imputed matching system. Most people who use Chrome browsers do so to triangulate segments, and thus find the common ancestors. Would that work with Timber?
I don't think that would make a big difference. They are filtering out some segments that may not be useful, so that's OK.
Yeah, but then they won't know what to do with that, or how to triangulate, etc.
Most people definitely won't know how to do that, lol. I did a little bit of that with matches from other companies but it ultimately wasn't very useful because there's so few matches at 23andMe I can identify since they don't have trees, and MyHeritage's database is smaller.
Not having the option to ignore or dismiss ThruLines suggestions is annoying, but ThruLines automatically does what I have been manually doing for a long time - building on a match's tree to find our common ancestor. Obviously, trees aren't always right but most of my Thrulines I can verify, and it is much faster at finding possible connections than I was doing it manually. I have several hundreds of matches I've confirmed a MRCA with at AncestryDNA, but only 21 from MyHeritage, a measly 7 from 23andMe, and 5 from FTDNA. I also have broken down several brick walls with my AncestryDNA matches (none with other companies), and identified my grandfather's bio father at AncestryDNA (though it was with the help of Y-DNA). You can triangulate segments all you want, if you have no way to identify the source of those segments, it's not of any use. And for that, you need trees. And Ancestry, even with all the errors in so many trees, not only has the biggest source for trees but also the biggest source for the genealogy records required to confirm or disprove those trees.
If they don't want to use it, that's OK. Other people will. Not everyone has to use every tool.
I have many more matches at all the databases with known shared ancestors (lost count) and use GEDmatch for a lot of Ancestry users. I see I have 35 matches mapped on Chromosome 1 alone. Over the years I've gotten pretty good at figuring out family trees of interesting matches when they don't have one. 23andMe is especially helpful here because you can see the relationships of Relatives to other Relatives that you've already figured out. I only triangulate segments when I know who the shared ancestors are, but then I use that data to identify common ancestors with "mystery" matches and adoptees.
23andMe recently provided a long-awaited breakthrough that I couldn't have found had the person tested with Ancestry, because it involved a rare (for white folks) West African Y haplogroup that confirmed a distant NPE. For the first time we have Y-DNA confirmation of the suspected father of my illegitimate GG grandfather.
If they don't want to use it, that's OK. Other people will. Not everyone has to use every tool.
Of course, I just think that Ancestry are catering to the people who wouldn't use it, or would be confused by it. They have a history of removing features that don't get much use (military pages, member connect, etc) so if they think a feature won't get used by most users because most are only interested in the ethnicity report, they are not going to spend their resources creating and maintaining that feature.
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I have many more matches at all the databases with known shared ancestors (lost count) and use GEDmatch for a lot of Ancestry users.
Unfortunately, it seems most of my Gedmatch matches haven't uploaded a Gedcom and aren't using the same username, so even if they have a tree on Ancestry, I have no way of knowing who they are or how we're related.
I recall someone saying it had to do with medical stuff - if you know you share a certain portion of a certain chromosome with someone, and you really dug into it, you could figure out which medical issues are associated with the SNPs found on that segment and therefore what they might be prone to. It's ridiculous because it wouldn't be easy or obvious and what motivation would your DNA matches have to do that? It's meaningless to them. Plus, it's not diagnostic anyway. It's never been a problem at any other DNA company but if they really wanted to cover their own butts, they could just offer it as an opt-in with a warning so people are informed and it's on them if they opt-in. But nope, they have to be stubborn.
Personally, I think it has more to do with them not wanting to confuse customers and make things too complicated for them to understand. Because like you say, most of them are only interested in their ethnicity report, they wouldn't know what to do with a chromosome browser so it would probably confuse them and then their support would have to answer a hundred questions and they'd probably still be confused.
That said, most of the time I don't find a huge need for a chromosome browser. Despite the lack of one, AncestryDNA has proven to overwhelmingly be the most useful site for DNA.
It IS the medical stuff. I've mentioned before that I have identified at least one relative who shares my APOE4 gene (one of the major Alzheimer's genes). I was playing with 23andme today and realized that the older versions were much more comprehensive and covered a lot of genes that are just now being referenced in medical and science journals. That said, one need not dig into the results to identify the APOE4 gene. If one knows the location of the gene and a match shares the same segment, you know he carries it. And then, if you're really curious, you can pull up the matches the two of you share, and see whether they carry the gene, as well. I do believe, however, that Ancestry could follow 23andMe's method of allowing people to consent to the sharing of their genes on an individual basis, if desired.
It IS the medical stuff. I've mentioned before that I have identified at least one relative who shares my APOE4 gene (one of the major Alzheimer's genes).
Everyone has the APOE4 gene. You must mean the high risk variant APOE-ε4 which means having rs7412(C;C) and rs429358(C;C). Although high risk, it is not diagnostic. You can also have only one risk allele (C;T) which puts you have a slightly increased but not maximum risk.
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If one knows the location of the gene and a match shares the same segment, you know he carries it.
That's not exactly true though - my understanding is that every SNP has two alleles, one allele is from your mother and the other is from your father - one on each side of the chromosome. If someone matches you on the known location of that SNP, they probably only match you on one side of the chromosome, so it means you only know that you share one allele, not necessarily both. So if you are C;C, you don't actually know if they are C;C or C;T on that SNP. Sure, you know they have at least one risk allele because you have both, but you don't know about the other one.
Further, if you're like me and you have C;T, you don't know which side is which, so someone matching me on that portion of the chromosome might be sharing the C or the T and I still don't know what their other allele is and therefore they could be C;C or C;T or T;T.
It's just not that simple.
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