My Living DNA Matches - Thu, 22 Nov 2018

During the summer, I took a DNA test with @Living_DNA. In addition to testing, I also took advantage of their free uploads, and uploaded both my 23andMe raw data, and my Family Tree DNA raw data.

I already posted about my results from my test, but at that time, their “Family Networks” which is what they call their list of people that you match to, was not available. Living DNA has become the 7th resource to offer genealogists access to the list of people they match to. 

About a month ago, on October 26, I received an email from Living DNA that my beta family matching results were available. I took a look. I believe I had 10 matches at the time, none of whom were very close, said to be 4th cousins or further, and none of whom I recognized.

Today, I received another email stating that I was in the “next group of users to gain access to our Family Networks beta.” I took a look and now, not only does my test result has matches, but one of my uploads, my 23andMe upload, also has matches.

I thought I’d take a more detailed looks and record my observations. This is what my matches now look like:

I now have 30 matches listed. None of them are known relatives. I believe I have seen a few of them in my match lists from other DNA testing companies, so that is good verification.

The first match is with myself, because it is picking up my 23andMe uploaded kit. It says that I share 3572.89 cM or 98.54% with myself, which tells me they are using 3626 cM as their 100% basis. They say my predicted relationship with myself is “Identical twin” and if I click the “i” info button next to that, I get a cute description that says maybe it is another test, or else I found my clone.

The other matches are all either predicted 4th cousins or predicted 5th cousins. The closest I match is 97.43 cM (2.69%).  The info box next to the cM value describes what a centimorgan is, but does not give any additional information such as number of matching segments or largest segment.

My 30th match is 63.4 cM (1.75%). All 30 matches are on the one page. There is no pagination. The “Export Results to CSV” button currently pops up a message that says: “Coming soon.” 

The “Message” button next to each match also tells you that it is coming soon.

Clicking on the “View Profile” button of my closest match (other than myself), gives mock ups of what will be a Map of my matches, a Chromosome Viewer and the Messages area, all of which are marked as coming soon. Currently there is no additional information about the match. Only the match’s name is given and nothing more.

But the profile does give something very useful now, and that is the shared matches. For my first match, it lists 23 shared matches. And each can be clicked on to bring up their profile. Unfortunately, they list your shared matches with the furthest one first to the closest one last. I’m sure Living DNA will see this and correct the order before too long.

But what is interesting is that the lowest 12 shared matches were between 39.19 cM and 60.69 cM. The other 11 shared matches were higher than 63.4 cM and were on my own match list, but these 12 were not. 

So what happens when I take a look at my shared matches with my upload from 23andMe? It gives me a list of 58 shared matches, all on one page, that start at 38.43 cM and go up to 97.43 cM (since it is lowest to highest). This gives me 29 additional matches that were not among the 29 on my own match list.

For fun, I also compared my matches from my DNA test versus my matches from my 23andMe upload. Of the 30 matches each showed, 27 were in common. 6 had the same cM. 14 of my test matches had larger cM and 7 had lower cM than my upload. The average difference was 3.3 cM and the largest difference was 11.68 cM (72.71 cM in my test and 84.39 cM in my 23andMe upload).

Living DNA has a few details to fix, pagination to add, and features to finish. But the framework looks very good and it’s nice to see their matches working.

Now it’s just a matter of waiting until Living DNA loads all their matches for everyone so that they give thousands of matches, like the other companies do.

For comparison, here are my current match statistics at the various companies:

The Database sizes are from Leah Larkin. It is interesting that AncestryDNA has so few people matching me with at least 50 cM, likely due to their Timber algorithm that filters out many matching segments. At the opposite end of the scale is Family Tree DNA that includes segments down to 1 cM in their total count.

I must say that I have found more traceable cousins among the 49 matches above 50 cM at Ancestry DNA than I have at any of the other companies. The next best company for determinable matches for me was 23andMe.

The above table gives you the 7 DNA pools where you can now get matches. Remember, you can only catch your DNA relative if they’re swimming in one of your pools.

Update: Dec 11, 2018:  Leah Larkin posted a quick poll on Facebook asking people how many matches they have on Living DNA. I checked at Living DNA and entered my current number of matches which is 65 and that exclude my match to myself. 

Over 70% of the people had zero matches. About 20% only had 1 match. The other 10% all had up to 10 matches. I am the extreme outlier with 65 matches.

I do notice that Living DNA has added pagination with 10 matches shown per page. They also seem to have fixed the problem of additional matches that I earlier was able to find through shared matches. Now all the matches I have seem to appear among the 65.