RLP 243: RLP with DNA 6 – Analyze your Sources

Nicole (1s):
This is Research Like A Pro. Episode 243, RLP with DNA six Analyze your Sources and evaluate your DNA matches Welcome to Research Like a Pro a Genealogy Podcast about taking your research to the next level, hosted by Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder accredited genealogy professional. Diana and Nicole are the mother-daughter team at FamilyLocket.com and the authors of Research Like a Pro A Genealogist Guide. With Robin Wirthlin they also co-authored the companion volume, Research Like a Pro with DNA. Join Diana and Nicole as they discuss how to stay organized, make progress in their research and solve difficult cases.

Nicole (42s):
Let’s go. Today’s episode is brought to you by com, the best place to search online for burial information for your family, friends and famous people. At Find, a Grave. You’ll find details about cemeteries and individual memorials for the people buried in those cemeteries. Hi everyone Welcome to Research Like a Pro

Diana (1m 2s):
Hi. Nicole, how are you today?

Nicole (1m 4s):
Great. I’ve been enjoying reviewing the chapters and Research Like a Pro with DNA. It’s such a great resource.

Diana (1m 11s):
Yeah, it is. It’s so fun going through the study group and really revisiting a d n project. I’m loving working on my Royce and d n project.

Nicole (1m 19s):
We hope that you guys will all join us for our next Research Like a Pro Webinar in our Webinar series for 2023. We’re having so much fun doing monthly case studies featuring the Research Like a Pro process and Research Like, a Pro with DNA process. You can join at any time and you can watch the recordings of the previous webinars from the year. Also the next Research Like, a Pro study group is this fall August through November of 2023. And to be a peer group leader, you can apply at our website and be sure to join our newsletter to get coupons for all of the sales that we have on our independent study courses. And we’re looking forward to the National Genealogical Society Conference, which is open for registration still and is going to be at the end of May in Richmond, Virginia.

Nicole (2m 2s):
And we are excited to see you there.

Diana (2m 5s):
Right. Well let’s get to our topic for the day, which is chapter six of Research Like, a Pro with DNA. And this chapter is titled Analyze your Sources and Evaluate Your DNA matches. So we know that we have to combine DNA research with traditional documentary Genealogy Sources. We have to use good analysis skills in both our documentary work and our DNA work. So when we first get started with the project, we need to create a timeline because we have got to see when our events happened. We’ve got to try to see what is missing in our timeline.

Diana (2m 46s):
And when we’re trying to put DNA evidence together with our documentary work, often it is so important to see when people were living in a certain area to see if they could have been the parents of our hypothesized child And. so it’s really important to get a good foundation for our research and that’s what a timeline can do for us. So in our timeline, whether we’re doing it in a spreadsheet or a table or on paper, we’d want to in include the event, the date, the place, a source citation. And then we also like to Analyze the evidence right at that time because that is a perfect time when you’re looking at your source again and you can decide whether it is an authored, original or derivative source.

Diana (3m 34s):
And then if you’re looking at primary, secondary and determined information, and then think about what kind of evidence that might provide direct, indirect, or negative evidence And. so as we work on that, we really start looking for inconsistencies. You know, some things may jump out at us and we can start making a list of questions that we’ll use in our research plan. This is an excellent step to do. At the beginning of any project, we may think we know everything about our ancestor, but there are so many clues hiding in those documents that we wanna make sure we’re pulling out. And it’s just good to familiarize ourselves again with everything that we know about the family.

Diana (4m 16s):
So just like we have to Analyze the details in a documentary source, our DNA Sources need to have some analysis as well so we can use them correctly. And it also helps us to create the source citations doing our analysis.

Nicole (4m 33s):
Absolutely. So learning how to understand and Analyze Sources is really important and it helps you recognize precisely what you’re working with and the quality of that information and that source. So let’s talk about understanding a source’s quality. And there’s three types of categories, original derivative and authored narratives. The original source is the first recording of the information, whereas the derivative is a copy or a translation, a transcription or a summary of another record. So that’s where the word derivative comes from because the source is derived from another original document. And then an authored work or authored narrative is a source created by an author who has gathered records, analyzed them and has created a new piece of work with their conclusions.

Nicole (5m 17s):
And often a narrative will include a discussion of both original and derivative were records. Now when we apply this to DNA N Sources, we have to think about what is the source of DNA N you cannot see your actual D N A to evaluate it directly, but you can see the results of DNA N testing. And usually the type of DNA n a testing we’re using is S N P testing single nucleotide polymorphism for autosomal and for mitochondrial DNA and Y D N often we’re using S STR R testing. So the reports of these types of tests are Sources that you can see that are reports based on the raw DNA n data.

Nicole (5m 57s):
So these, these reports are the original Sources and in addition to your raw D N A results which are original, you can also see original Sources in databases, databases of DNA matches and other D N A reports on the websites about our ethnicity and that kind of thing. So the raw data doesn’t really mean anything genealogically until it’s compared with other people’s DNA N and put into that database of Matches. So when you receive your DNA results, you have access to reports and lists and these are original Sources. They help you to check Matches against your family tree and see if they verify it.

Nicole (6m 37s):
One thing that’s challenging is that these match lists from the DNA testing companies are only able to be accessed by the DNA test taker and anyone they share that with and they’re, you know, blocked by passwords and things. So sometimes these limitations make it harder for people to compare raw DNA N and look at the actual DNA N match and that kind of thing. So it’s important to really understand the DNA testing company and the ULA and how they generate those. And each company has a special algorithm that they use to interpret DNA n data, compare your DNA N with other test takers data and some companies test different SNPs than other companies and use different testing chips And.

Nicole (7m 19s):
so even when the testing company is looking at the same locations or SNPs in the genome that other companies are looking at, they will sometimes have different thresholds for the size of DNA segments reported and the minimum amount of DNA reported. So for example, ancestry reports shared DNA segments, 8 cent organs and above. And you can look at the is OG wiki to see what each company uses as their criteria for matching segments, which can be really helpful. This article is called autosomal D N A testing comparison chart at the IS OG Wiki. Another original source is the My Heritage Auto cluster report, but my heritage, they automatically set the matching parameters there, whereas like auto clusters from genetic affairs, you can put the amount of DNA you want to use in there.

Nicole (8m 9s):
So each company and each third party tool does things a little bit differently. For original DNA Sources you’ll see that most DNA testing company has reports that are variations on the following, a DNA match list, an ethnicity estimate, a chromosome browser, and shared Matches or auto clusters. So those are all considered to be original Sources created by the testing company.

Diana (8m 33s):
Great. Well let’s talk about what derivative DNA Sources could be. And this is not something that we use a lot, but we may have some situations where we’re just getting an email from a person and they’re describing some of their Matches. We can’t look at their original match list, but they’re sending whatever they wrote about it. And of course the worry with derivative Sources is the air will creep in And. so perhaps they wrote the center Morgans wrong or maybe they I interpreted their test incorrectly And. so we are always careful of derivative DNA n Sources and seek to get two originals.

Diana (9m 14s):
We also have author DNA Sources and we actually do use author DNA Sources quite a bit because we are using family trees. The only reason that we can find a common ancestor between ourselves and a DNA match is by tracing both of our family trees back until we find that ancestor that shared DNA with both of us And. So we rely heavily on online family tree, but we do recognize these are authored DNA Sources and could be accurate or could have some incorrect Links. Now another type of author DNA source that we would use would be a DNA research report And. so these are written by a explaining the information found and summarizing the conclusions based on evidence from original D NA reports and documentary records And.

Diana (10m 5s):
so anyone who’s going through our study groups or our DNA eCourse will be writing up a report bringing together everything that they found using DNA and documentary evidence. Now another type of authored source would be an ancestry DNA through line and that’s because through lines are based on our DNA matches and then also the family trees. So ancestry DNA through lines is based on that authored source of family trees as well as the original source of the dna. And then we have my heritage theory of family relativity, which also is based on user submitted family trees. So those are, those are good examples of authored DNA Sources.

Nicole (10m 48s):
Now let’s talk about information analysis. So each source contains many different pieces of information. So we have to look at each piece that we’re analyzing and decide whether it’s primary information, secondary or undetermined. And primary is information given by a person who witnessed the event firsthand. And secondary is information provided by somebody who obtained the information secondhand and reported it. So they weren’t there, they weren’t a witness to the event And. Sometimes we don’t know who the informant was or if they were a witness, so we just put undetermined for that one. So for DNA N information, we have primary DNA n a information and reports about the results of d n testing are usually primary with the D N A testing company as the informant And.

Nicole (11m 33s):
so they’re the ones that compared the raw DNA N results of the users and found that there was a match. So they’re reporting that. So some examples of primary information from DNA reports could be the raw DNA data, the amount of senor shared between two Matches, the haplo group, the number of str, the start and stop points, And, so forth. Now secondary d n a information is the reporting of information first received elsewhere. So a Genealogist reported DNA matches from a testing company or family tree information, that kind of thing. If they are sharing that with you like by word of mouth or writing it in an email, then that could be secondary because they didn’t actually perform the matching the testing company did.

Nicole (12m 15s):
So the person who receives the results is not a a witness or a firsthand informant. They would be a secondary informant also for family trees, the DNA testing company is actually a secondhand informant for the user’s trees because they don’t have firsthand knowledge of all the information in a user’s family tree and undetermined DNA information. That’s just if we don’t know who gave the information. So that’s not usually a case we see.

Diana (12m 45s):
All right, well let’s talk about evidence analysis. And again, these comment threes indirect evidence, direct evidence and negative evidence. And when we’re we’re working with these, we think about if the information clearly states the answer. And if so, it’s direct. If we have to use some deduction to put together two or three facts or more, that’s indirect. And then negative evidence is when the ancestor’s not found in the expected time and more place. So when we’re talking about direct evidence with dna, we actually can’t do that for most cases because there’s so many different relationships for each amount of shared dna.

Diana (13m 26s):
And you might say, well what about a parent and child? Well there’s not a lot of possibilities for that much DNA shared, but even then you can’t determine which tester is the parent, which tester is the child without more information And. so if you had a research question like who is Ben’s biological father? Ben’s DNA test results report a parent-child relationship with a male tester. So this is direct evidence of a very close relationship. But until more evi information’s known, it doesn’t directly answer the question. The match could be an unknown son of Ben or the identical twin of Ben’s father. And we actually had this happen in our city group where one of our city group members’ mother was an identical twin, which is something you don’t see very often.

Diana (14m 11s):
But with DNA we really do have to consider all the different possibilities. So generally we are using DNA as indirect evidence. We’re combining our DNA evidence with documentary evidence. Now if we’re testing a hypothesis with mitochondrial or Y DNA such as is this Smith man related to this Smith man and we do a big Y 700 DNA tests and find them in the exact same very specific HAP group, then we could say yeah, that is direct evidence of a connection there. But often we are using indirect evidence. Now can we have negative evidence with dna?

Diana (14m 53s):
Well, negative evidence is the absence of expected information And. so an example of this would be if you have an oral tradition in your family that you have gotten Native American heritage, grandma was in full blood Native American and then you do your ethnicity test and perhaps you’ve done it on all the different websites and absolutely none of them show Native American or even a Native American haplo group. So that would be negative evidence proved by the DNA that no grandma was not a full-blooded Native American. And then another example of negative evidence would be if you have a DNA test done was say you wanted your first cousin to test to use their DNA results and then it comes back with a much smaller or maybe not even a match of DNA and that would be negative evidence that you’re really not the relationship that you thought.

Diana (15m 50s):
So keep in mind negative evidence is not the same as negative search results, it’s when we use it with other information, other documentary evidence to prove something.

Nicole (16m 1s):
Yeah, I think it’s important to note that with negative evidence like of a particular ethnicity, the example of a grandparent is, was a good one because you would expect to inherit segments from your grandparent if they were a full-blooded Native American. But if they were like a one eighth Native American, you may not have inherited those segments that they had that were Native American So. you can’t always make proven conclusions just from one piece of negative evidence. You need to build a body of evidence. Same thing with the negative evidence of DNA matching with cousins. Like you need to know which cousins you will share DNA with. You will share DNA with all of your first cousins and 99% of your second cousins, but you won’t share DNA N with all of your second cousins once removed and third cousins and more distant because of recombination.

Nicole (16m 49s):
So if you test a third cousin and you don’t match it doesn’t mean you don’t have the same common ancestor it it could just mean you didn’t inherit the same segments. So we have to be careful with negative evidence about making broad claims, but it’s really important to be able to use negative evidence as well. So it’s, it can be challenging but it’s good to think about some ideas of how it can be used. Great. Alright, let’s talk about evaluating your Matches. One way that you can do this is by creating a diagram of your Matches descending from a particular common ancestor. When you have the Matches there and you can see their relationship to the test taker and the amount of shared D n A, it’s really a great way to Analyze the relationship and the shared D n A and the overall body of evidence that you have.

Nicole (17m 34s):
One thing that you can do is take your diagram that you created of your close Matches in one of the earlier chapters and make a copy of it. You can duplicate it on lucid charter diagrams.net and then you can remove Matches that are from different side of the family and just leave the the Matches that are focused on your Objective and focusing on only the pertinent family members will help keep your diagram more manageable. One thing you can think about doing is color coding different types of Matches. So if you have like X DNA matches, you can color code them and you can do the same with Y DNA matches to help you evaluate the source information and evidence and really help you see the different types of Matches you have and what they’re telling you.

Nicole (18m 14s):
Looking at your diagram can help you figure out the relationships with your Matches. And then you can use the method of autosomal DNA n match analysis where you go to the shared center Morgan project and look at observed relationships and amounts of shared DNA that have been seen in known relationships and see if what you are finding with your Matches falls within the observed ranges So, you can look at your diagram and ask yourself the following questions to help evaluate each match. So number one, did the autosomal DNA matches fall within the expected total centor or percent range and associated probabilities for the known relationships? And if not, are there alternative relationships besides those proposed for that DNA N match?

Nicole (18m 57s):
And three, does this DNA match help verify the proposed family relationships? And if the amount of shared D n A between the tester and the match seems kind of high, you might wanna consider that they could have more than one common ancestral couple and they’re sharing in more than one way. And if they share less than expected, then we might need to consider they could be descending from a common ancestor through different spouses and are therefore half third cousins or something like that,

Diana (19m 22s):
Right? And it’s really important to notice that because you might suspect that you have some pedigree collapse or end domy or multiple relationships in your family tree brought on by this analysis and So you might need to consider another scenario of how you are related to that DNA match and it takes a lot more research and more analysis to figure that out. But you could run the test at Jed match called are Your Parents Related? And that’s looking for pieces of DNA N that are identical in both maternal and paternal chromosomes and we call this runs of homozygosity or R O h And. so if you have a match that seems to share more than the expected amount of DNA N, you may want to check their kit for that as well.

Diana (20m 9s):
We also want to consider the myosis groupings in the shared center Morgan Project PDF because they give us some more data for evaluating shared DNA and possible relationships. So to understand myosis, just think of it as steps, it is a set of similar relationships and each grouping of relationships has the same number of separating myosis or recombination events. Because of this, the minimum average maximum amount of shared DNA for the relationships in the group will be the same So. you can use these groupings, you have to actually go to the PDF on from the shared center organ project to see these and it can better help you understand the range of shared DNA for relationships.

Diana (20m 53s):
So just keep in mind that some of the relationships have less submissions than others for that shared Son of Oregon project. The easier known relationships like first cousins or second cousins have a lot of submissions because we typically know that, but you know something like a half third cousin once removed, maybe we don’t know those relationships or haven’t reported those as much And, so there won’t be as much data for that. So something else to think about are the small segments and we do need to be careful of small segments, anything less than seven to 10 cent Morgans, and these could be false positives. Our testing companies have good technology, but it’s not perfect And.

Diana (21m 34s):
so when it gets to be small segments, they can’t provide the exact sequence of nucleotides transmitted by each parent. Ancestry DNA does attempt to face the data and separated into maternal and paternal chromosomes, but some of the companies use very small segments and we just need to be careful of that. We also want to consider the age of the segment. A segment could be very old and we could have a situation where we are sharing in a pilot region, which means we have got excessive identical by dissent sharing and these are population segments from perhaps an AGAMOUS community, you know, something far back rather than recent common ancestry.

Diana (22m 20s):
So something to keep in mind, the longer the segment that we share with someone, probably the more closely we are related in a genealogical timeframe. So we’re sharing lots and lots of tiny little segments. Those could just be these very old segments or population segments that we are inheriting. So one thing the ancestry does, it has the timber algorithm, which does remove these smaller segments from pilot regions in any of our Matches who are sharing less than 90 cents and other DNA testing companies don’t remove these, but you can see these on DNA painter’s chromosome mapping tool. So if you are taking your DNA from my Heritage or family tree DNA and painting those chromosomes onto the DNA painter chromosome map, it does show those pile up regions with a little bit of a striped segment so it can show you and that can help you.

Diana (23m 18s):
So hopefully you can just see there’s a lot more to your analyzing your shared DNA than just looking at the number and saying, oh, okay, well they’re a third cousin that that fits. And often it’s when we have something that doesn’t quite add up that we have to go and do deeper analysis.

Nicole (23m 35s):
Now we’re gonna talk about XMA analysis and if you have an XD match, you’re probably looking at either 23andme or family tree DNA or JED Match because the other companies don’t report that the X chromosome’s unique inheritance pattern is really helpful for eliminating part of the pedigree, for finding the common ancestor. But there are some challenges in analyzing the X D N A Matches because testing companies unfortunately have only tested a small number of SNPs on the X chromosome. Because of that there are more false Matches than on other chromosomes. So it’s recommended that you only Analyze longer X D N A segments that are over about 15 cents.

Nicole (24m 14s):
You can go a little bit smaller if you are looking from a male to a male match, but if you’re looking at females to females who have two Xs, there’s a lot higher possibility that there’s false matching going on there. So if you share X D N A with the match, then you can focus on X D N A segments that are a minimum of 10 to 20 cents and then look at an X D N A pedigree chart to figure out which Ancestors may have contributed to your X D N A and that will help you narrow it down and then examine the family tree of your X DNA matches and narrow down their tree as well. Then you should have just a few lines to focus on.

Diana (24m 55s):
All right, well let’s talk about why DNA analysis and we have to really understand the inheritance pattern that it’s passed from father to son And. so on through time it’s pretty easy to understand and in cultures where we have surnames passing through the patrilineal line, it can really help with doing some analysis, but that’s not the case in every culture when we’re using Y dna. We’ve got the Y S T R tests, short tandem repeats, and we’ve got haplo groups. So keep in mind that if you’ve tested at 23andme and living dna, they do give you a high level HAP group. But to get the really good details about your Y dna, you’ll want to test at family tree dna.

Diana (25m 38s):
And if you upgrade or test at the big Y 700 level, you’ll get you a much more specific haplo group. Now when you look at your Y DNA match list on family tree dna, you’ll see Matches with people who have tested at all different levels. And some of these levels we no longer test at the 12 and 25 marker, but you’ll see Matches at 37, 67 and one 11 and you’ll see what we call genetic distance, which is just the number of differences or mutations between two sets of results. Now there are also the Y SNP results and the SNPs are the single nucleotide polymorphisms and the big Y 700 test gives you, as I said, a confirmed PA group and a specific place on the haplo tree.

Diana (26m 28s):
So they’re testing much more of that Y chromosome with the big Y 700 and you will get a list of Matches four big Y 700 s, other people who have also tested there, and you’ll get a list of Matches who share three or fewer differences. So, you always want to look at your apple tree to help estimate the timeframe you and your Matches are related. So lots and lots goes into the Y DNA analysis as you have that big Y 700 tree, it gives you much more information. So one of the things that is a recommendation to start at the least expensive level at 37 and then eventually upgrade so that you can have more to work with

Nicole (27m 12s):
For mitochondrial DNA match analysis. What you’ll get at family tree DNA is a report that tells you your haplo group and people with the same mitochondrial DNA N as you. And you’ll get a list of Matches that are a genetic distance of zero one or two. Typically this indicates that you have a common matrilineal ancestor sometime in the past, but it doesn’t really tell you how close they are because the mitochondrial d n mutates so slowly. Originally family tree DNA n a only tested the hyper variable control regions HV R of mitochondrial dna. But now most people take the full mitochondrial sequence fms, which includes HV one, HVR two, and the coding region So.

Nicole (27m 55s):
you can VE your Matches at each of these different levels and they predict with 50% confidence that the time to the common ancestor with an exact match is 1,300 years and an exact match at the HBR one and HV two level is 700 years. Looking at the different levels, it’s important to really understand what you’re looking at. Are you, do you have a match with HBR one, HV two or full mitochondrial sequence So? you have an exact match at the full mitochondrial sequence, then they predict the time to common ancestor is 550 years. And of course these are just estimates And. so at the full mitochondrial level, that’s where you get the genetic distance of zero one and two and three.

Nicole (28m 40s):
But HVR one and HV two, they only show exact Matches for those levels. One thing to be aware of with mitochondrial d n is hypoplasia and that’s the coexistence of multiple mitochondrial D N A variants in a single source. So if a person has hetero plasmic, mitochondrial d n, it might cause some Matches to look more distant than they really are or not show up as a match at all, especially if they’ve only tested the H V R regions. So just be aware of that and if that is happening to you, then you can look it up. But there’s a table with symbols that you can look for that help you find hetero plasmic mutations.

Diana (29m 19s):
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Diana (30m 0s):
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Nicole (30m 4s):
Okay, so let’s talk more specifically about evaluating shared match clusters and finding common Ancestors. And this is a really common methodology that’s used with autosomal DNA matches. So after you’ve divided your match list and clustered them into groups, then you can use their family trees of those people in that cluster to start identifying common Ancestors. And sometimes you might have Matches in that cluster who don’t have trees So, you may have to build a quick tree for them. This could be just a quick hypothetical tree to find back their common Ancestors with you. Another way to kind of figure out how it Matches related to you is to look at their shared Matches list.

Nicole (30m 44s):
If they don’t have a tree, you can at least look at their shared Matches and see which people who already do have trees that you’ve identified the common ancestor they share with. So if they share with all the people who are descendants of the same common ancestral couple, you can hypothesize that they’re also a descendant of that common ancestral couple as well. So that’s kind of how it works with dividing into clusters and trying to find the common Ancestors of that cluster. Then generally most people in that cluster will be on that family line at least. So here’s an example of evaluating a specific DNA match. So let’s say we are match with Gary, he shares 675 cent Morgans of dna.

Nicole (31m 29s):
So what are the possible relationships with this person in The Shared cM Project tool? When you put in 675, the possible relationships include a 60% probability that he could be a great grandparent, great grandchild, great aunt or uncle, half aunt or uncle, first cousin, half niece or nephew, great niece or nephew or great-grandchild. And then there was a 40% probability that Gary was a half great aunt or uncle, a half great niece or nephew, a great great aunt or uncle, a half first cousin, a first cousin once removed, or a great great niece or nephew. So there’s a bunch of possible relationships, they’re all pretty close.

Nicole (32m 9s):
And without knowing more about Gary, it would be hard to figure it out. So, you can write a note to Gary and he replied, I was adopted. So looking at that 675 cent Morgans that he shares, if that’s our only data point, then that can be challenging, but maybe he shares with your siblings and 645 with one sibling and only 392 and 274 with two other siblings. So then these numbers can help you see that maybe you’re not as, not as closely related as you originally thought. A cousin will share different amounts of DNA with family members because of recombination. So as you continue to communicate, maybe you find out that he’s a lot older, like 20 years older, so he is not gonna be a great grandparent or great-uncle or great nephew.

Nicole (32m 56s):
And you know, you might know I don’t have any grandchildren, so he can’t be a grandchild or a great-grandchild. So, you can rule out some relationships. And the final conclusion is that he’s probably a first cousin or a half uncle since he shares a lower amount of d n a with some of the siblings, then it’s probably gonna be like a half first cousin or a first cousin once removed. So that would be a little more likely. So after doing research and family tree building, eventually you can figure out that he’s your first cousin once removed and that his father and your grandfather were brothers And. so this example is actually from Robin and as she did this, she was happy to find a new cousin and she was able to share family information and invite him to reunions.

Nicole (33m 44s):
So she was able to really figure this out a lot by evaluating the DNA and then working in the family tree to kind of figure things out.

Diana (33m 52s):
Wow, thanks for taking us through that example. And method thought occurred to me as you were discussing that, that now we have the ability in the shared center working project to enter the data for multiple people. So, you know, you could put in Robins and her siblings and because hers was an outlier, she shared more than her siblings did. It would kind of eliminate some of those other possibilities for her. So that’s that’s a neat new tool we have.

Nicole (34m 18s):
Yeah, you could put in the lowest one and the highest one, which would help eliminate a lot of different relationships leaving you with just the fuel.

Diana (34m 24s):
Right, right. So let’s finish up this episode with just talking about targeted testing. And after you’ve gone through this whole process of analyzing the DNA matches that you’re working with, you really need to ask some questions. First of all, do you even have enough DNA to rule out other hypotheses? And second, what other test takers could you add to achieve your research Objective? And are you using all the different types of DNA autosomal, DNA Y dna, XD and mitochondrial DNA that would help you to answer your research question And? so often we do need to take a look at that and see what else we can add.

Diana (35m 7s):
And it may seem difficult to find living people to test, but we have a lot of tools and as Genealogist, we know how to use them. We can search newspapers, obituaries, find a Grave. Those are all places that we can find living descendants of our Ancestors and collateral lines and we can reach out to them in a variety of ways and see if they’d be interested in taking a D N A test. And we often just need more data. So unlike our documentary work where we can’t go add another census to our ancestor, we can add more DNA to our research project And.

Diana (35m 48s):
so remember that we will not share DNA with all of our distant relatives, however, we are going to share autosomal DNA with our close and distant cousins And. so we just need to think about the people that will be the best test takers for us. And second cousins are good options because they nearly always share DNA with us and that will help us to verify great grandparents and we still have a good chance of of matching with third cousins. And that would help to confirm second great grandparents. And then as we’re moving back on the tree, we’re just not going to share as much. So we will need to have more people testing and having access to their tests to help us to reach our Objective.

Diana (36m 36s):
So targeted testing is a great way to increase the coverage of our Ancestors genome and find more Matches and more information,

Nicole (36m 44s):
Right? And we’ve had really good success with finding people who’ve already tested in the company database and just asking them to share the results with us. So often you don’t need to pay for anyone’s test anymore, you can just collaborate,

Diana (36m 56s):
Right? And if they’ve already taken a test, they are more likely to take another one. So if you find a man who’s taken an ancestry, the autosomal test, you could probably reach out and see if he would do a Y DNA test for you. They’re already used to the idea of testing. So that can be helpful.

Nicole (37m 14s):
All right, so the task for this chapter is to make a timeline for your research subject, your ancestor, and then Analyze the evidence and the Sources and the information in there. And then continue building your D N A match diagram and focus on the Matches that descend from the person in your research Objective and Analyze the information in your diagram looking for the amount of shared d n and the relationship. And if that lines up with observed values in the Shared Center Morgan project, then determine if you need to do any targeted testing at this point.

Diana (37m 49s):
All right, well, we hope you’ve enjoyed learning all about analyzing your Sources and evaluating your DNA evidence, and we hope you have a great week and we’ll talk to you next time. Bye-bye.

Nicole (38m 2s):
Bye-bye. Thank you for listening. We hope that something you heard today will help you make progress in your research. If you want to learn more, purchase our books, Research Like, a Pro and Research Like a Pro with DNA on amazon.com and other book sellers. You can also register for our online courses or study groups of the same names. Learn more at FamilyLocket dot com slash services. To share your progress and ask questions, join our private Facebook group by sending us your book receipt or joining our courses to get updates in your email inbox each Monday. Subscribe to our newsletter at FamilyLocket dot com slash newsletter. Please Subscribe rate and review our podcast. We read each of you and are so thankful for them. We hope you’ll start now to Research Like a Pro.