Discover What You’re Made of with Grandparent Inheritance Charts

Legacy Tree Genealogists is excited to announce the release of our free Grandparent Inheritance Charts tool. Based on software developed by Kitty Cooper and with her assistance, we have developed a free tool which enables you to easily map the segments of DNA you inherited from each of your grandparents (often referred to as chromosome mapping).

Who Gave You the Most DNA?

Through our tool, you can also discover exactly how much DNA you share with each of your four grandparents – each will have given you roughly 25% of their DNA, but this varies quite a bit! Who are you the most like, really? To use this tool, you just need three autosomal DNA tests: one for yourself, and one for a paternal grandparent (one of your father’s parents) and a maternal grandparent (one of your mother’s parents).

Did You Pass on the Most Genes?

If you don’t have living grandparents, use this tool for your own descendants or other relatives. Find out which sections of your DNA live on in your descendants! You can purchase autosomal DNA tests at several different companies. We recommend testing with our partners at Family Tree DNA or MyHeritage.

How This Works

When an individual tests themselves, a paternal grandparent and a maternal grandparent, it is possible to identify the segments and percentages of DNA that they share in common with each of their four grandparents. Any large segment of DNA that an individual shares with their grandparent was inherited from that grandparent. At any location on a person’s paternal chromosome, they can only have inherited DNA from either their paternal grandfather or their paternal grandmother. It is impossible to have inherited a single location from both. Therefore, any DNA that an individual does not share with a tested grandparent by process of elimination had to have come from the other grandparent. In this way, by testing yourself, a paternal grandparent and a maternal grandparent, we are able to identify all the segments of DNA you inherited from each of your grandparents, not just the ones you tested. If you have tested more than two of your grandparents, great! Our tool accepts data for 2, 3, or 4 grandparents.

Using the Grandparent Inheritance Chart tool, you can see the exact segments and the total percentage of DNA you inherited from each of your grandparents. Segments which cannot be assigned to a specific ancestor because they are too small or because they are not actually tested are also shown in an unassigned category.

What More Can You Discover?

For an additional cost and with our help you can also take your inheritance chart a step further and identify exactly which genes, traits and characteristics you inherited from each of your grandparents.

Even if you do not have two living grandparents to test, chromosome mapping can still be performed by testing yourself and multiple relatives. Through chromosome mapping, you can also explore which segments of DNA you inherited from more distant ancestors. Legacy Tree would be happy to assist you with this and can help you make a DNA testing plan to explore your genetic inheritance in even more detail. Contact us today for a free estimate.