I have an array that contains DNA markers. It was created about 9 months before I was born, and came from merging the arrays of my parents. When the two arrays were merged, you will noticed that it merges in chunks..
If I compare my array to the array of my brother, 50% of the chunks are identical. My array is also 50% identical to each of my parents.
What I am trying to do is figure out how a person would reconstruct the original array of my mother given the input of the arrays from my father, brother, and myself.
A further extension of what I would like to do is partially reconstruct the array of my grandparents by including the input of uncles (25% identical), 1st cousins (12.5% identical), etc.
Does anyone have any idea how to approach this problem?
For additional clarification, the reconstructed arrays will not likely have all of the data. This is OK, in the example above, the reconstructed mother will only have about 75% of the DNA segments. If you compare a child to his father, delete any of the matching segments, and move the remainder to the mother array.. then do the same with the brother to father, you will have about 75% of the mother reconstructed. Two siblings are only 50% matches because they likely pickup different segments from each parent.
Each generation halves the DNA, since there are two parents. You can reliably determine if someone is related out to 5th cousin using these DNA comparisons. I would like to be able to reconstruct the DNA of shared ancestors in an attempt to gain better matching. If you want more information, I am getting the DNA results from the Family Finder test offered by Family Tree DNA with the goal of discovering my wife's birth family.
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