What is DNA Painter?
DNA Painter is a free online tool that lets you visually "paint" DNA segments from your matches onto your chromosomes. Over time this builds a chromosome map showing which part of your DNA comes from which ancestral line.
How a chromosome map works
For each match, you enter the segment data the platform shows you: which chromosome, the start and end position, and how many centimorgans are shared. You assign each segment a colour linked to a known ancestor or ancestral line. As you add more matches, an increasingly complete picture emerges of which chromosome sections belong to which line.
Other tools on the same site
Besides chromosome mapping, DNA Painter also offers the "What Are The Odds?" tool for weighing different relationship hypotheses against shared DNA, and an interactive version of the shared-cM tool for translating a cM value into possible relationships.
What do you need?
Not every DNA platform shows segment-level data by default: AncestryDNA has traditionally not offered a built-in chromosome browser, while MyHeritage, 23andMe, FamilyTreeDNA and GEDmatch generally do. Chromosome mapping works well alongside the Leeds Method and match labeling: where those two group matches by line, DNA Painter shows exactly which DNA segment belongs to that line.
Source
DNA Painter was created by Jonny Perl.
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