Chameleon Tool (Borland Genetics)

The Chameleon Tool in Borland Genetics is used for mapping DNA kits to onto different templates. It is named Chameleon because it operates by allowing one kit to acquire the template of another.

Autosomal DNA Templates
Different testing companies measure data at different positions along our chromosomes. The set of positions or “SNPs” tested and recorded in a raw DNA file comprises the kit’s data template. There is significant overlap in SNPs tested by the industry-leading testing companies, which allows for reliable cross-template comparisons. Also, certain companies have modified their templates over time, such as when Ancestry switched from its V1 template to Ancestry V2 I 2017. There is no Borland Genetics template; nor does Borland Genetics keep track of what templates are used by the major testing companies. Rather, the Chameleon tool allows for template comparison and easily maps from one template to another, and allows for custom templates that best fit a project’s available DNA resources.

Template Mapping Strategies
If all or nearly all of your kits are on one template, and you have an outlier kit on a different template, the best approach is likely to simply map the outlier kit to the template of the others. This takes approximately 40 seconds using the Chameleon tool. Simply select the outlier kit and one of the kits on the desired template and choose the option that maps the outlier kit onto the desired template. Note that this type of template mapping causes a reduction in resolution, related to the amount of overlapping SNPs on the two templates.

If you have data from multiple templates within a project and you wish to extract and maintain all useful data, then you will likely want to create a combined template that incorporates all SNPs on the templates of the available resources. Simply begin by selecting two kits on different templates and choosing the combined template option from the Chameleon tool. If there is not significant overlap between the templates, this operation may result in a large file. If you wish to combine more than two templates, simply repeat the process with one of the combined output Chameleon kits and a kit on a third template. When you have created the desired template, simply map all of the other kits in your project onto that template. The result of such a procedure is that no data will be lost due to incompatible templates. When a reconstruction project is complete, should you choose to do so, you can take the resultant reconstructed kit and then map it back on to one of the original factory templates (i.e. map it from a hybrid 23 & Me v5/Ancestry V1/Ancestry V2 kit back to simple Ancestry V1 kit using the template mapping option described above. There will be less data loss using this workflow than in a workflow that begins by converting all of the initial resources to Ancestry V1 kits in advance because some Borland Genetics tools impute data to fill the no-calls created by poor template overlap.

The final option from within the Chameleon creates a shrunken template consisting of only overlapping SNPs across two templates. This technique can be used to produce kits without template-mapping no-calls, but is not advisable for most reconstruction projects. Please note that regardless of the SNPs chosen in the Chameleon tool, when a Borland Genetics kit is uploaded to GedMatch, it will still receive a “Z” designation, and if uploaded to the ordinary GedMatch (as opposed to GedMatch Genesis), it will be mapped onto GedMatch’s proprietary template to facilitate comparisons with kits in the GedMatch database. Please note that the compatibility of Borland Genetics kits with GedMatch in no way implies any affiliation between Borland Genetics and GedMatch. Borland Genetics, however, wishes to give its users the best possible user experience by providing compatibility across these entirely independent platforms.