About DNAGedcom

Our Story

DNAGedcom began with a personal mission. Founder Rob Warthen — a software developer with a computer science degree from Virginia Tech and a master's in AI from Johns Hopkins — was asked by his future mother-in-law to help her adopted daughter, Sue, find her biological family. When a DNA test arrived as a Christmas gift, it was the first piece of information Sue had ever known about her origins. She was moved to tears.

Working alongside Search Angels and the adoptee community, Rob quickly realized that the sheer volume of DNA data was overwhelming and that no one had adequate tools to make sense of it. He built the first version of DNAGedcom to gather, organize, and analyze that data — and ultimately used it to identify Sue's birth father.

What started as one family's search has grown into a platform used by thousands of genetic genealogists around the world. DNAGedcom has been serving the community since 2013, and Rob continues to develop the software, run community groups, and contribute to the broader genetic genealogy ecosystem through related projects like mitoYDNA.org and DNAAdoption.org.

Our Mission

We reduce the manual effort in extracting and analyzing DNA data, provide software that helps determine relationships from test results and family trees, and offer analysis and comparisons not otherwise available to users — all in a single desktop application.

Who Uses DNAGedcom

DNAGedcom is built for anyone working with DNA for genealogical or relationship research. Common use cases include:

• Adoptees & Unknown Parentage — Search for birth parents, biological siblings, and extended family using DNA matches and clustering analysis.
• Donor-Conceived Individuals — Identify biological parents and discover half-siblings through shared DNA segments.
• NPE Discovery (Not Parent Expected) — Investigate and understand unexpected DNA results that reveal previously unknown parentage.
• Family Tree Builders — Extend your genealogy beyond the paper trail by confirming or discovering ancestral lines with DNA evidence.
• DNA Match Identification — Figure out how you are related to your DNA matches by clustering them into ancestral groups and triangulating shared segments.
• Relationship Verification — Confirm suspected family connections — are we really cousins? Is this the right family line?
• Finding Living Relatives — Reconnect with cousins and extended family you never knew existed, across multiple testing platforms.
• Half-Sibling Discovery — Identify half-siblings and understand complex family structures through shared DNA analysis.
• Forensic & Investigative Genealogy — Support cold case investigations and unidentified persons cases using genetic genealogy methods.
• Endogamy Research — Untangle DNA results in populations with high intermarriage, where traditional matching thresholds may not apply.
• Ethnic Heritage Exploration — Compare ethnicity estimates across testing companies and explore your ancestral origins.
• Search Angels & Volunteer Researchers — Manage multiple kits and cases efficiently with centralized data gathering and analysis tools.

What We Provide

The DNAGedcom Client is a desktop application for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Chromebook that covers every stage of DNA genealogy research:

• Multi-Service Data Gathering — Download matches, chromosome segments, In-Common-With (ICW) data, haplogroups, ethnicity estimates, and family trees from A*, 23andMe, FTDNA, MyHeritage, and GEDMatch. MyHeritage and GEDMatch gathering is currently unavailable and will return in a future update.
• DNA Clustering & Analysis — Group your matches into ancestral clusters using the Warthen Interactive Cluster, Collins-Leeds Method, Shared Clustering, and Chromosome Matrix Analysis (CMA).
• Common Ancestor Detection — Automatically identify ancestors that appear across multiple matches' family trees to help pinpoint shared lineage.
• Kit Search & Management — Search across all gathered kits by surname, ancestor, or individual name. Manage multiple kits and credentials for each testing service.
• Reports & Export — Generate CSV and Excel reports for matches, chromosome data, ICW relationships, and family trees.

Contact

For support or questions, email support@dnagedcom.com. Please include your DNAGedcom username, client version number, and the log file from the Settings page.