What's the Difference Between Build 36 and Build 37, and Should I Care? To even begin to tackle this problem, we’re going to first need to understand what a “build” is. Perhaps you may have seen references to “build 36” or “build 37” on FTDNA or GEDmatch or Borland Genetics, or to “build 38” on SNPedia. Never heard of SNPedia? We’ll cover that in future editions in this blog. But to get to the point, when you hear these terms, we are referring to sequential versions of the accepted map of the human genome by the scientific community (or a dedicated group of scientists thereof known as the Genome Reference Consortium). Each build represents a refined understanding of the sequence of base pairs along our chromosomes. A loose analogy to build versions would be the sequential editions of the Rand McNally road atlas, but with one major difference. When Rand McNally publishes subsequent editions of its atlas, it generally does so becaus...