You’ve seen me type this before: DNA research is not my strong suit.
I understand the basics, and I’ve had family members test over the years, but genetic genealogy is one of those areas where I still consider myself very much a student. Give me an obscure civil record or a complicated spreadsheet and I’m happy. Give me centimorgans and chromosome segments, and I feel like I’m untangling spaghetti.
So when GEDmatch recently unveiled its rebuilt website, I decided it was a good time to go back and take another look.
Because I’m not a DNA expert, this isn’t intended to be a comprehensive guide to GEDmatch. Rather, it’s one student talking to another about what I’ve discovered. Here are five things I’ve learned while exploring the new site.
1. You can do quite a bit for free
One of my first questions was: How much can I actually do without paying for a subscription? Turns out it’s quite a lot.
A free GEDmatch account currently allows you to manage up to five uploaded DNA kits. If you already had more than five before the limit was introduced, GEDmatch did not delete the extras, although you cannot upload additional kits beyond the limit unless you delete existing ones or upgrade.
The free account also provides access to some of the tools a beginner is likely to want first. The One-to-Many tool lets you see other GEDmatch kits that match yours, while One-to-One lets you compare two specific kits.
That’s plenty to keep me busy while I’m learning.
2. Your DNA test doesn’t have to come from GEDmatch
This was something I didn’t fully appreciate when I first encountered GEDmatch: It isn’t another DNA testing company.
You don’t buy a GEDmatch test and spit into yet another tube. Instead, you download your raw DNA data from a testing company and upload that data to GEDmatch. It accepts data from major testing companies, including AncestryDNA, 23andMe, and FamilyTreeDNA.
That’s important. If I test with Ancestry, I’ll find other people who tested with Ancestry. But what if the cousin holding the clue to one of my brick walls tested somewhere else? If we both upload our results to GEDmatch, we now have a place where those results can be compared.
3. GEDmatch teaches you how to use the tools
When I logged into the new site, I expected DNA tools. What I didn’t expect was how much educational material I would find.
GEDmatch has articles, videos, and tons other resources explaining both the tools and the DNA concepts behind them. Topics range from beginner material to more advanced subjects such as triangulation, phasing, clustering, Superkits, and Lazarus.
For someone like me, that’s important. A powerful tool isn’t terribly useful if I don’t understand what the results are telling me. And with DNA, there’s an added danger in knowing just enough to draw a conclusion the evidence doesn’t actually support.
Right now, I’m spending as much time learning as I am analyzing matches.
4. Lazarus may reopen a door I thought had closed
This was the discovery that really caught my attention.
When consumer DNA testing started becoming popular, I asked both of my parents to test. My mother agreed and took tests through both Ancestry and 23andMe. However, my father didn’t want to. He never specifically told me why, although from other conversations I got the impression that his concerns involved internet privacy and identity theft. I respected his decision.
My father died in 2017, and I assumed my opportunity to use his DNA for genealogy had died with him. Then I learned about GEDmatch’s Lazarus tool.
Despite the dramatic name, Lazarus doesn’t recreate a deceased person’s complete DNA. Instead, it attempts to reconstruct portions of that person’s genetic profile using DNA from living relatives. The resulting Lazarus kit isn’t the equivalent of having an actual DNA test from that person, and matches should be treated as clues rather than definitive proof. Still, the possibility fascinates me because some of my most stubborn brick walls are on my father’s side.
It also presented me with a question I hadn’t expected:
Just because I can try to reconstruct portions of my father’s DNA, should I?
My father had the opportunity to take a DNA test and chose not to. My husband and I had an interesting conversation about whether using DNA from other relatives to reconstruct portions of his genetic profile would respect that decision.
I haven’t completely answered that question for myself yet. For now, I’m learning how Lazarus works and what I might be able to learn from it before deciding whether to proceed. I’m not going to tell anyone else where that ethical line should be drawn, either. It’s something each researcher should consider carefully for themselves and their family.
5. GEDmatch is really an analysis toolbox
Perhaps my biggest realization has been that I was thinking about GEDmatch the wrong way. When most of us first encounter DNA testing, we’re presented with results: Here’s your ethnicity estimate. Here are your DNA matches. Here’s a list of people who might be your cousins.
GEDmatch takes you another step. It’s less about giving you a polished set of results and more about providing tools to investigate the DNA itself. You can compare individual kits, examine shared DNA, look at chromosome segments, explore relationships among matches, and start asking more complicated questions about how people might be connected.
I’m beginning to understand the difference between having DNA results and doing genetic genealogy. I’m still very much at the beginning of that second part.
And that’s okay.
I’m still learning
The new GEDmatch site hasn’t suddenly turned me into a DNA expert. If anything, exploring it has shown me just how much I still have to learn. But that’s part of what makes genealogy interesting. Even after years of family history research, I can still stumble across an entire set of tools and techniques that make me feel like a beginner again. This time, instead of getting frustrated by everything I don’t understand, I’m going to see where it takes me.
I’ll keep you posted.