The Chromosome Browser for shared DNA segments is a visual tool allowing you to locate the DNA segments you share with a DNA match.
Shared DNA segments, also referred to as ‘matching segments’, are the sections of DNA that are the same between two individuals. These segments were most likely inherited from a common ancestor.
To find the Chromosome browser for shared DNA segments, go to your DNA Matches page, and click ‘Review Match’ on one of the DNA matches:
Scroll down the page to find the Chromosome browser.
On the Chromosome browser, you can see your 22 pairs of autosomal chromosomes and where the DNA segments you share with the other person are located on the sequence.
On each chromosome, look for the purple bars which represent the matching segments between you and the DNA match.
The gray segments are segments that don’t match.
The white striped segments represent the DNA markers that are not sampled for analysis.
In the above example, you can see that in this specific case Chromosome 4 contains one long shared segment, whereas Chromosome 1 doesn’t have any shared segments.
What does it mean?
DNA segments can be found on all of the 22 autosomal chromosomes. The segment length is determined by the centiMorgan distance between the first SNP and the last SNP. The longer the shared segment is, the higher the probability that it was inherited from a common ancestor, which means that the two people are genetically related.
To learn more about this topic, read this article on the MyHeritage Knowledge Base:
How to Use Chromosome Browsers for Genealogy
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