My slides are always available at https://slides.com/kittycooper

A Beginner's Guide to GEDmatch

By Kitty Munson Cooper
Blogging at blog.kittycooper.com

This is what you see when you go to GEDmatch.com - the front page or landing page for GEDmatch

Go to the GEDmatch education page for many videos, no log in needed    gedmatch.com/education/

CIick the link in your handout for a video on how to register for GEDmatch and upload your DNA or copy the link below

GEDmatch was founded to let you compare GEDCOMs and autosomal DNA results from different companies with powerful analysis tools

A problem is that the various DNA testing companies test different SNP sets which are not the same although there is much overlapping

So GEDmatch developed a special template for comparing them !

Your dashboard (aka home) page has much help for new users plus messages about what's new on GEDmatch

When you log in your information and uploaded resources are listed on the left side of the page below the day's messages and the welcome

 

We call this the Dashboard Page

The very bottom of your Dashboard Page 

 

notice the CONTACT US button!

The top right of your Dashboard Page 

has information items

 

notice the Support Request link!

How to Use GEDmatch brings you to this welcome page

The free tools are listed in a panel on the right of the Dashboard

And they are listed with other tools in the left menu you get when you click on the hamburger. Wide screens get a top menu instead

Clicking the hamburger at the top left slides in this menu, click the X to get rid of it

In order to use the tools at GEDmatch you need to have uploaded a DNA kit.

Even if you have been sent a kit number, the tools won't work

If you have just uploaded a kit, there are a few things you can do while you wait ( a day or two) for it to be ready to use (made into the GEDmatch template aka "tokenized")

See these slides of mine for how to use the admix tools: slides.com/kittycooper/gedmatch

Reminder, the slides for all my past presentations are at

slides.com/kittycooper/

You can play with the admixture tools, many have not been updated in years but they are still fun and different from your testing company

I recommend running the

DNA File Diagnostic Utility 

 

you want to see a

Status: Good

I am often asked about  slimming

 

for the purpose of quick comparisons the heterozygous SNPs are removed because with one of each base, those  will match every base pair

 

Next check use the "Are your parents related" tool as this can make it harder to figure out new relatives

 

Unless you are from an endogamous population or know your parents are cousins this will likely be negative

 

sample negative result

sample negative result

people from endogamous populations often find that their parents are distantly related

At the bottom right of your dashboard are the tools for family trees stored as GEDCOMs

Please create, upload or import a GEDCOM of your Family Tree 

You can download your family tree as a GEDCOM from Ancestry, MyHeritage, GENI, WIKItree or any genealogy program

you can also add your DNA kit to your profile at WIKItree 

I recommend uploading a privatized GEDCOM with about 10 generations of ancestors for your kit

Since a GEDCOM is a text file, you can edit it in a plain text editor like the notepad on a PC

I recommend changing the first names of anyone living to just LIVING

and removing birth month and day leaving the birth year

Another great free tool lets you look at the GEDcoms of your DNA matches who have uploaded them

GEDCOM + DNA matches

Click the GEDcom id to see that tree

When you click that id, the first page shows just an individual.

 

This has some useful information,

especially in your own gedcom

But typically we just click to see the pedigree

Top half of my Aunt's pedigree, the clickable little tree shows where a match to another GEDCOM has been confirmed

Have a look at the GEDCOM comparison tool

2 GEDCOMs comparison

The next thing to do is set up your tag groups

 

You need to know the kit numbers of your known relatives (easier once you can do a one to many)

Your profile is on the left above your resoures

The next page has a set of tabbed headings; click on Tag Group Management

 

I recommend setting up a group for each great grandparent line using the same colors you used at Ancestry or on your Leeds Chart 

Also perhaps a group for close family and for localities see

https://blog.kittycooper.com/2017/03/gedmatch-tag-groups-plus-new-one-to-many/

Click on the green button Display/Edit tag group to get to this page

Once you have created a tag group. add the kit numbers of your known relatives at GEDmatch via the Manually Add Kits

The page with the form to Manually Add Kits

Once you have a GEDCOM uploaded and tag groups set up, it is time to use the most important tool for finding relatives: the One-To-Many

Counter intuitively the "limited" version has more functionality than the original

The original one-to-many shows the kits that match the kit number you give it with the overlap indicating how many SNPs are in the comparison, red means too few, and it shades down from there

Notice the concealment of the email address, clicking on that takes you to the user lookup for just that kit

Example of a user lookup from the original one-to-many

First make your selections on the the One-To-Many form. the defaults do not include tag groups so check the One

I also prefer to raise the minimum cM to at least 10 and for endogamous people to 20 cM

Example of the limited one-to-many,

every column is sortable

Notice that the kit number is colored with its tag group

https://blog.kittycooper.com/2017/04/using-gedmatch-tag-groups/

If the kit is connected to a GEDCOM or to a tree at WIKItree that shows here

The haplogroup information is entered by the user, note that it can be connected to the mitoYDNA web site ....

This old post explains the column headings like Gen

https://blog.kittycooper.com/2016/06/gedmatch-tools-2016/

Every column is sortable, I often sort by largest segment, also any entry that is blue is clickable see

blog.kittycooper.com/2015/08/size-matters-for-matching-dna-segments/

The haplogroup information is entered by the user, note that it can be connected to the mitoYDNA web site ....

Recently I had a close match with a name I did not recognize and no tree, so I clicked on her kit number to look at her one to many

I could tell immediately from the tag group colors of her matches that she was a Munson

If tag groups don't solve where a match is related try

the ICW function:


"People who match
one or both kits"

 

The match button on the one to many list will bring you to this page with the kit numbers filled in

Comparing my Dad and my new Munson cousin

Sometimes when they have no tree it is because they do not know it

My new 3rd cousin was looking to find out who her dad was. Happily I was able to figure it out for her.

Some of the  FREE tools that I find invaluable are highlighted

Checking my new cousin in the relationship probability tool by entering the shared cM

To summarize this first part 

Uploading a family tree (GEDCOM) will help you figure out DNA relatives

Setting up tag groups will also help figure out new family members

You need to setup a login and to upload a DNA kit to make use of the GEDmatch tools

The various one-to-many functions are how you find your DNA relatives

SEGMENT DATA

A matching segment of DNA is where a long run of SNPs are the same in two different kits. The problem is that the testing process cannot tell which side they are from. Thus the match can even be from a mix of the two sides, maternal and paternal. 

To look at what segments in your genome are a match to  a DNA relative click the number under largest segment

That will take you to the form for the one to one comparison with the kit numbers filled in

Note that clicking on the kit number takes you to the form for listing the one-to-many for that person

Clicking the largest segment on the one to many brings you to this comparison form with the kits filled out

One or two items might be changed for the display, else the defaults are fine

One to one without the graphics, position only, min of 10 cM
My double third AJ cousin

One to one with numbers and graphics (partial page)
My double third AJ cousin

One to one just graphics with my double third AJ cousin at min = 7cM

Full siblings always have some fully identical regions (FIRs) - where both strands of DNA got the same SNPs from their parents - those are the green bars

 

this is the graphic only, one-to-one, for my brother and myself

 

FIR only version of my comparison of my brother and my Ancestry kits

One to one on the X chromosome with my double third AJ cousin

Example of an X one to one from clicking on largest X segment

New exciting tools typically come to Tier 1

The first thing to do is make a combined kit if you have tested at multiple companies

If you have tested at more than one company, since they may have tested some different SNPs, best to upload both and combine them into a super kit (then mark the base kits research) see

https://blog.kittycooper.com/2019/04/make-a-combined-dna-kit-for-yourself/

Visual comparison of my 23andme kit to my Ancestry kit

Tier 1 One to Many full version with one Tag Group

You can check boxes next to multiple kits and then use the visualize button to use the multikit analysis tools

Clicking on the total shared brings up the relationship estimate, while the largest segment still goes to the one to one

MULTI-KIT ANALYSIS (Tier 1)

when you click multiple check boxes on your one-to-many then click the visualize button it takes you to this page of choices

You can do a matching segment search for just the selected kits

Alternately you can do a triangulation for just the selected kits

My Compact Chromosome Browser

The 3D chromosome browser includes multiple matrices, autosomal. X, and number of segments

FInd common ancestors with your DNA matches

CLUSTERING

Set the parameters for clustering, raising the low end will give clearer boxes

The result has to be downloaded

Can software figure out the family tree from the shared DNA?

AUTO Kinship

After you download it and unzip it click on the folder Autokinship then on the HTML file autokinship to see a long page in your browser: first the clusters

My auto kinship clusters

one endogamous population grandparent, and another missing from the testing community

Since so many of my MUNSON cousins are tested ...  what would autokinship came up with for that cluster 2 green box?

Lauritz + Josephine Monsen

Inga

Lawrence

Alfred

Christian

Pretty accurate. I have identified which child of my great great grandparents each match is descended from. Only the last one is not, he is actually descended from a sister of Josephine's

?

A closer look at my cousins with the one generational correction

?

Next is a matrix of how many cM  they each share with each other

And finally there is a list of shared segments that met your criteria

Tim Janzen did a great Rootstech talk about these new features at

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjA59BG_cF4

Shall we look at the auto tree for my endogamous cluster?

Here are the few trees created for cluster1 - the problem is not enough kits have linked trees on GEDmatch

Gugenheimer and Thannhauser are known ancestral lines,  not Shadur 

Phasing

  • If you have at least one parent tested then you can separate what you got from each parent
  • If the maternal or paternal phase can be determined the values will be assigned else the original unphased values will be kept
     

LAZARUS lets you create a kit for comparisons for a person who cannot be tested from their close relatives

There are many more fun Tier 1 tools you might try

A Beginner's Guide to GEDmatch - 2024

By Kitty Cooper

A Beginner's Guide to GEDmatch - 2024

Using the tools at GEDmatch, the Basics for Finding Relatives and more: Presentation by Kitty Cooper http://blog.kittycooper.com

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