Description
GENE201 Module 5 M5A2: Autosomal DNA Genetic Relatives Project
Now that you have read about how genetic relatives are identified by the testing companies and some of the tools that can be utilized to analyze these matches, let’s check your knowledge.
The following questions evaluate your understanding of the identification and analysis of genetic relatives by the testing companies.
Read the following and, based on your understanding of autosomal DNA (atDNA), provide short written answers to the following questions:
Assume that Mary and Susan share a single segment of DNA. That segment of DNA is located on chromosome 5, and is 6.59 cMs long.
Based on your understanding of the matching thresholds at the three testing companies, at which company will Mary and Susan not be identified as genetic relatives? Based on the table entitled “Average autosomal DNA shared by pairs of relatives, in percentages and centiMorgans” on the ISOGG Autosomal DNA Statistics (Links to an external site.)website, what is Mary and Susan’s possible relationship?
For the remaining questions, assume Mary and Susan also share two other segments of DNA: (1) a segment of 51 cMs on chromosome 12; and (2) a segment of 19 cMs on chromosome 14.
If Mary and Susan share these three segments of DNA, what is their likely possible relationship based on the same table on the ISOGG Autosomal DNA Statistics (Links to an external site.)website?
Now look at the Shared cM Project (Links to an external site.)results, which uses actual data. What could the relationship between Mary and Susan be, based on the data from the Shared cM Project?
References:
International Society of Genetic Genealogy, Autosomal DNA statistics (http://www.isogg.org/wiki/Autosomal_DNA_statistics (Links to an external site.))
The Genetic Genealogist, Visualizing Data From the Shared cM Project (http://www.thegeneticgenealogist.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Shared-cM-Project-Image-2.png (Links to an external site.))