Genome Mate

Today was my first time using Genome Mate.

I must say I am very impressed.  I think I will now be using this tool daily in my genetic genealogy research. Honestly, I wish I had checked into this wonderful tool sooner.  It has so many features that I have been wanting to have use of.

It did take me quite some time to get all set up, but that is mostly because I have so many kits and I am sure that the time invested will result in me saving a great deal of time. I have long believed that I am already sharing with enough people that I should be able to make amazing discoveries, but I just lacked the tools to organize my genetic genealogy research.  

Make Profiles

Firstly, I made profiles for each of the 23andMe kits I administer on my account. This is 16 kits presently.  

Add Gedmatch #s

For each profile I added their Gedmatch #s. Since GEDMATCH hasn't been accepting uploads for a bit, a couple of my kits don't have GEDMATCh #s yet.

Attach GEDCOM files

For each profile I added a GEDCOM of their ancestors.  As I have such a large file, in some cases I had to make a file of the ancestors of the person, but if you have a smaller GEDCOM you can pick the profile person from the same GEDCOM.

Upload the Aggregration files downloaded from 23andMe

This required me to actually acquire each of the files as described here for each of the 16 kits.

Upload the segment matching data from 529andYou

In theory, all the data from 23andMe is already uploaded from the Aggregation files above.  Sometimes people stop sharing, and will appear in the 529andYou file but not still in the Aggregation files. Plus 529andYou can contain data from compares done in other accounts, and between accounts.  I will have more to say on this when I get to the part of making Profiles for matches. I did this with the "Add New Relatives" box checked.

Upload the CoA (Countries of Ancestry) files from 23andMe

I downloaded fresh Countries of Ancestry files from 23andMe and imported them to GenomeMate one at a time. Later, I will have more to say on this as well when I get to the part of making Profile for matches.

Upload FTDNA Chromosome browser data

Since I only have 4 kits transfered to FTDNA this was pretty quick.  I downloaded fresh files from FTDNA.

Upload AncestryDNA data

As I haven't been able to test at Ancestry yet, I have to just fantasize that I did this step.

Upload GEDMATCH data

Since I haven't tested at Ancestry yet, and only have 4 of the 16 kits at 23andMe transferred to FTDNA this is an important step for me. Since GEDMATCH doesn't have full functionality at the moment, I'll have to add this later.