So you’ve just received your chosen DNA Test results. Now what? A lot of people don’t realise that you can do a lot more with the raw test results than what is shown on any of the sites that test DNA.

Your raw results come in the form of a file that can be easily uploaded to a number of other sites. To top it off almost all of these sites and tools are free!

What’s your preferred storage method for Family Trees?

1. Promethease ($5)

“Promethease is a literature retrieval system that builds a personal DNA report based on connecting a file of DNA genotypes to the scientific findings cited in SNPedia.”

Promethease costs $5 and basically uses freely available data on SNPedia to generate a report outlining all of the health related information your DNA holds. This is particularly useful for anyone that has tested using AncestryDNA or FamilyTreeDNA and does not have any health results to go with their ancestral results. Something worth noting is that FamilyTreeDNA specifically removes some health related SNP’s so this won’t be of much use to people that have used this service. But for $5 it hardly breaks the bank if you’ve just forked out 20x that on the test in the first place.

Either way this is definitely worth it if you are interested in learning what your DNA means for your health. Don’t do this if you are a hypochondriac!

2. Gedmatch (Free or $10 for Extras) 

Gedmatch allows you to upload your raw DNA results from: 23andMe, AncestryDNA, FamilyTreeDNA, WeGene and GENETIConcept, then once they have been processed you can match with anyone else from any site that has uploaded their DNA test results to Gedmatch too. This is a good way to get around having to buy kits on each site.

The site also contains tools you can use to analyse your DNA such as: Various admixture tools that can break down where parts of your DNA are likely to have originated, Eye colour predictions which look at various SNP’s thought to affect eye colour, Kit-Kit comparisons which allow you to compare two kits and see exactly what parts of your DNA you share with someone and a few more other cool tools. It’s free to use and runs off of donations as well as a newly implemented tier system which gives you access to more tools for a $10 Donation. 

3. 23++ Chrome Extension and Ancestry Helper Chrome Extension. (Free) 

“23++ is an extension for the Google Chrome Browser that adds additional functionality to 23andMe and makes the site a little nicer to use.”

“The extension helps with analyzing and comparing your AncestryDNA test results. The automated scanner, accessible using the Full Scan and Resume Scan buttons added to your DNA Home Page, will go through your list of DNA matches and open each one to scan their pedigree charts.”

These tools help make their related sites easier to use and add features such as enhancing the way DNA matches look and the ability to download matches for future reference.

4. Dave Pike’s DNA Analysis Tools (Free) 

Dave Pike is a professor at the Memorial University of Newfoundland and has developed a load of useful tools that can be used to gain further insight in to your DNA.

They are particularly useful if you have very close relatives that have also tested as you can do things like phase children’s DNA with parents to see exactly which alleles (One half of an SNP, one is inherited from each parent) were inherited from which parent or searching for Discordant SNP’s, these are SNP’s that differ from the parents, possibly meaning the SNP has mutated.

5. James Lick’s mtDNA Haplogroup Analysis Tool (Free) 

This tool is useful if you’re interested in your direct maternal line. It can more accurately plot where on the mtDNA Human tree your maternal Haplogroup is found. For example my 23andMe mtDNA result came back as “k1a10” wheras James Lick’s tool narrowed it down to “k1a10a” not a massive difference in my case but it could have narrowed it much further by looking at genetic markers 23andMe’s algorithm doesn’t look at. The tool also tells you similar Haplogroups and which markers you are missing. This is still not a replacement for getting a dedicated mtDNA Test from FamilyTreeDNA as it only looks at around 19.7% of the entire mtDNA so a dedicated test would be much more accurate.

Uploading your results to all of the tools above will not only give you more information on your genome but you’ll also end up understanding the way DNA Tests work much more clearly.