I recently got the 23andMe DNA results for my wife’s 86-year-old grandmother Zoila (the only living great-grandparent of our children), so I now have an example of DNA over four generations. Above left are her first four matches: her son, granddaughter, great-granddaughter, and a “Mr. Garcia.”
Garcia is the surname of Zoila’s mother, but is also a very common Spanish surname. I then clicked on shared matches between Zoila and Mr. Garcia:
This result was somewhat surprising. Mr. Garcia shared 2.72% DNA with Zoila over 12 segments, and then 2.71% DNA over 13 segments with Zoila’s son. (The fact that it’s 13 segments instead of 12 is not what is surprising, as one large segment could be reduced to two smaller segments.) What I would consider extremely unlikely is that Zoila would contribute nearly identical shared DNA over numerous segments perfectly to her son.
Because 23andMe allows you to see shared DNA bit by bit, I then compared Mr. Garcia to both Zoila and Jose along each chromosome.
From seeing the chromosomal comparison, it’s now quite clear what’s going on. While several of the shared DNA segments Jose has with Mr. Garcia are the same as those of his mother, there are also several unique segments both of them have. This means that Mr. Garcia would also have shared DNA with Jose’s father! (I can’t have him tested since he is deceased.) I have not found any way that Jose’s parents are related, but given that they are from the same area of Dominican Republic, a “common cousin” is not surprising. If you wonder how you can have more shared DNA with a match than your tested parent, this is one explanation.
This is the value of seeing shared DNA. If you are just told the amount of DNA and along each segments, and then see shared relatives, I might have concluded that Mr. Garcia was a genetic relative just through Jose’s mother, when Mr. Garcia was actually a genetic relative through both of Jose’s parents.
