Need a Chromosome Browser
I love the number of DNA matches that I have and the pro shared matches information. But without a chromosome browser it is difficult for me to determine if my shared matches actually share a common ancestor. PLEASE add a chromosome browser. I have already uploaded my DNA to other websites that have chromosome browsers, but that doesn't help me compare them to my 20, 000 matches on ancestry.com.
Hi there, and thank you for getting in touch. We appreciate you sharing this feedback with us, and we can certainly take some time to advise on this. We do not have a chromosome browser for a couple of reasons. The first is privacy. As you will know, most people use a chromosome browser in order to do segment triangulation. The idea is that if three people share the same, small piece of DNA, you can trace them all back to the same most recent common ancestor. In terms of privacy, with a chromosome browser, if you know one person’s DNA, you know all three. In other words, the person doing the comparison now knows all three people’s DNA over a small segment. If that DNA contains something sensitive, then the person doing the comparison knows this about all three of them. The second reason is that this approach fails more often than might be expected. In other words, just because three people share that same small segment of DNA, that does not mean they share the same most recent common ancestor. When looking at DNA this small, it is possible that these three people share the DNA segment because it is a common segment in the population they came from, and not because of a recent ancestor. Using this incorrect information can cause mistakes in building their family tree. We hope this helps to offer some context as to why we do not offer a chromosome browser. Additionally, we're grateful for the opportunity to recommend a feature that we think might be quite helpful to you, if you haven't been using it already, would be our Enhanced DNA Match tool. This can offer an estimate of how your Shared Matches may be related to one another. You can access that tool with our ProTools memberships, and if you're interested in learning more about that, you can learn more below. Link: https://support.ancestry.com/s/article/Ancestry-Pro-Tools-Membership?language=en_US Even with this in mind, we will continue to innovate and find ways to provide information that meets the needs of customers on their genetic genealogy journey. Thanks very much for getting in touch so we could share this insight and take your feedback on board, too. We hope you have a great start to your week, and we wish you all the best in your continued research!