Getting Started with Borland Genetics: A Step-by-Step Guide

Borland Genetics is a DNA database that integrates an extensive suite of tools to help you reconstruct the DNA of your ancestors. It’s designed for genealogists who want to go beyond just discovering cousin matches and into the realm of reconstructing family members’ genetic profiles. Whether you're just starting out in genetic genealogy or looking to dive deeper into DNA reconstruction, this guide will walk you through the key steps to get up and running with Borland Genetics.

1. Who Uses Borland Genetics?

The users who benefit the most from the tools at Borland Genetics are those who have tested multiple family members.  The original idea that led to the development of Borland Genetics was that the product would be helpful when, for example, DNA tests were provided to attendees at a family reunion, the tools would automate the process of analyzing the shared DNA among the testers to reconstruct the genome of their shared ancestors.  If you have tested 5 or more family members, Borland Genetics is worth trying out.

2. Why Try Borland Genetics?

Borland Genetics offers a unique suite of tools that testing companies simply don’t provide. This includes features like flexible DNA kit phasing (no other commercial DNA database allows, for example, sibling phasing, or full-genome phasing using a child rather than an available parent), ancestor reconstruction, and the latest Virtual Reality Chromosome Browser, a tool that automatically creates a 3-D metaverse-style chromosome map using your reconstructed ancestor reconstructions.  You do not have to be an expert in genetic genealogy to use the tools on this site.  In fact, the site's flagship tool, the Creeper, is specifically designed to walk users through complicated workflows step by step to achieve their goals.

3. How to Create an Account?

To get started, head over to Borland Genetics (www.borlandgenetics.com) and create a free user account by clicking the "Create An Account" tab at the top of the screen and following instructions from there, which include creating a password, and verifying your email for two-factor authentication.  Other than a few site features such as the educational tools, use of the site requires creation of a user account for security purposes.

3. How to Upload Your DNA?

Once your account is set up, it’s time to upload your DNA data. Borland Genetics accepts raw DNA files from all major testing companies, including 23andMe, Ancestry, MyHeritage, and FamilyTreeDNA.

DNA Upload Process:

  • First, download your DNA kit(s) from your testing company(ies).  If downloading more than one kit, be sure to label them so you can identify the different donors.
  • Once your DNA kit(s) are stored on your device, log in to your Borland Genetics account and click on the "Upload a DNA Resource" button at the top of the home screen.  (There is also an identical at the top of the Resource Manager screen.)
  • You will then be taken to a simple form which will guide you through uploading each DNA kit.
  • Borland Genetics will then process your kit, and usually within 24 hours, your kit will be ready for use in the various tools on the site.

Borland Genetics takes privacy seriously—your data is stored securely, and our terms of service detail how your sensitive data is used.

4. Navigating the Site

Once you’ve uploaded your DNA kit, you should get familiar with the site’s navigation. Here’s a breakdown of key areas:

Home Screen
Once logged in, from the home screen, you can access tabs such as "Settings" where you can set your account settings, including choosing a user alias, "Messages" where you can exchange messages with other users, "Tools" which which provides links to some of the site's most popular tools, "Support Center" which allows you to create and track customer support tickets, and "Terms of Service" which always provides the most up-do-date version of the site's terms of service for your reference.  You will also have icons or "widgets" on your home screen that will help you navigate to your DNA resources and to any of your reconstruction projects.  (There are also widgets for some featured public reconstruction projects).

Resource Manager
On the home screen, the first widget is your Resource Manager, which is your repository of DNA kits and donor/ancestor profiles.  The screen defaults to a list of your DNA resources, grouped by their ancestor/donor profiles.  However, there is a button at the top which allows you to toggle to an alphabetical list of profiles in your family tree.

Tools Tab
Many of the site's most popular tools are listed in a chart on the Tools tab.  Most of these tools also have a corresponding tutorial video.

Context-Specific Toolboxes
Depending on whether you’re managing a kit, profile, or project, you’ll have access to different toolboxes, specific to the context:

  • Kit Toolbox: Manage individual kits and perform tasks such as extracting DNA segments from a kit, viewing reconstructed segments, initiating kit download, etc.
  • Profile Toolbox: Merge kits attached to the same donor (such as DNA results from different testing companies), access family tree features and reports, and try the site's latest interface, the "Virtual Reality Chromosome Browser."
  • Project Toolbox: Projects, depending on their project type, have toolboxes that allow you to do things like uploading and editing relevant chromosome maps, interacting with the site's automated assistant, the Creeper, and administrative tasks like resetting a project to a previous restore point.

5. Key Features for Beginners

To help you get started, here are a few tools that are especially helpful for new users:

Missing Parent Tool
This tool allows you to reconstruct the DNA of a missing parent by subtracting the data from an available parent from his or her child.

Phoenix Tool
Phoenix allows you to use relatives on one side of the family to construct the ancestor through whom you are related to them.

Darkside Tool
Darkside is like a hybrid of the above mentioned Missing Parent and Phoenix tools, in that you select cousins on say your maternal side, and the tool subtracts them from your DNA to create a partial DNA reconstruction for your father.  (It is conceptually like the Missing Parent tool, but the interface is identical to the Phoenix tool allowing you to phase against relatives other than an available parent).

The Creeper
The Creeper is an AI assistant that guides you through using the site's tools to accomplish your reconstruction goals. It’s a beginner-friendly way to start understanding the platform’s more advanced features. Plus, it introduces the concept of Smart Projects, which can walk you through more complex tasks like visual phasing.  The Creeper is dynamic in that it "creeps" through your specific DNA resources and matches, and devises step-by-step workflows to reconstruct your ancestors.  The interface is reminiscent of a choose-your-adventure novel.  The Creeper is a subscription tool that is accessed from individual project screens (where applicable).

6. Creating Your First Project

Subscribers are able to create projects of different types, with purposes ranging from organizing resources (much like file folders) to facilitating multi-step reconstruction workflows (Smart Projects such as Revers Phase and Visual Phasing projects).  After uploading your available DNA resources and familiarizing yourself with the platform, creating a Creeper project is usually the next step for beginners.  This is accomplished from the Tools tab, by clicking on the link to create a private project.  On the project creation screen, you are asked to select the type of the project, and you select type "Creeper."  This project will then appear on your home screen and will be the starting point for your DNA reconstruction journey.  If applicable, based on your individual resources, it will spawn additional projects of different types that will help you maximize your success on the site.

7. Why Subscribe?

A subscription not only unlocks access to advanced tools, but it also funds further development of unique DNA tools.  Borland Genetics has a history of releasing groundbreaking features like Revere Phasing, dynamic 3D chromosome maps and AI-assisted DNA reconstruction, and continues to innovate and lead the industry in third-party DNA tools.  Your subscription supports the ongoing growth of the Borland Genetics database and helps fund the design and development of the DNA tools of the future.  Subscription funds are vital for continuing the development of the platform’s tools and features.

What Does a Subscription Include?

  • Access to advanced tools like the HIR Mapper and Segment Lab.
  • Innovative family tree features and reports such as the Leah-O-Gram which allows you to track inherited segments visually through a descendant chart.
  • Creeper-assisted Smart Projects.

Your subscription helps fund the development of tools that are more advanced than anything offered by the major DNA testing companies.

8. Contact & Support

If you ever need help, Borland Genetics offers several support channels. You can contact support directly from the site or join the Borland Genetics Users Group on Facebook, where you can ask questions and collaborate with others.

Whether you’re a new user or an advanced genealogist, Borland Genetics provides a wealth of tools and a supportive community to help you in your genetic genealogy journey.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
Help!   My Segments Are So Sticky! Back in the day, it used to be popular to refer to certain segments as “sticky” when they appeared to be passed down from generation to generation untouched.   That sort of name-calling has reduced greatly now that we have a clearer understanding of the statistical rules that our chromosomes follow as a result of random recombination.   It turns out that the smaller a segment, the more likely it is to escape the chopping block of recombination in each generation and instead either be passed to the child in full or not at all.   Let’s take a look at some numbers and see how this plays out. As our starting point, we’re going to go back to our definition of centiMorgan, as explained in my blog from a few weeks ago about the statistical impossibility of two full siblings not sharing any DNA segments.   If you missed that one, that’s OK, here’s the way I like to think about a cM:   A cM is a unit that denotes a span of a chromosome that has
Read more
Image
Is It Possible That I Share No DNA With My Full Sibling? Whenever someone asks whether it’s possible that two siblings can share no DNA segments in common, it conjures up memories of watching the movie “Twins” back in 1988 where one sibling played by Arnold Schwarzenegger inherited all of the “good genes” of his parents, and the other played by Danny DeVito inherited all the “useless genetic material” (quoting the movie).  Most of the time, when I see a question on this topic in the Facebook groups, I see a lot of links to the famous genetic genealogy green chart (which provides observed cM ranges of different classes of relatives) and to DNA Painter’s tool (which provides the possibility of different relationships based on a given cM value), as well as a chorus of people shouting “DNA doesn’t lie!” (not my favorite expression, but that’s a topic for a different day).  Of course, both the green chart and the DNA Painter tool will tell you right away that it is impossible for f
Read more

Introducing the Borland Genetics Segment Lab

Image
  It occurred to me today that I have not yet done a tutorial on how to use the Borland Genetics “Segment Lab” tool.   Introduced as part of last October’s anniversary “Fall Features Release,” it’s one of the newest tools on the site, and probably also one of the most under-utilized.   Hopefully, this demonstration will show how it’s also one of the most valuable tools on the site. The Segment Lab is Borland Genetics’ native chromosome map/phase map editor.   While a far cry from a robust chromosome mapping solution like DNAPainter, it has specialized features that I designed to make our task of ancestor DNA reconstruction easier, and to help maximize the reconstruction coverage of our output ancestor kits. Before we dive into using the tool, I want to point out that the Segment Lab is NOT a tool that creates a phase map from scratch.   At Borland Genetics, that’s what the HIR Mapper does, and when it comes to mapping matches from outside the Borland Genetics platform, DNAPainter i
Read more