Genetic Genealogy’s Next Breakthrough: Genealogical Bioinformatics with Arun Konanur

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Most of us work our DNA matches one at a time: a match, a shared match or two, a tree to compare. Arun Konanur, founder of Discovering New Ancestors, asks a different question: what could a computer find if it looked at all of your matches, and all of your cousins’ matches, at once?

Arun is a leader in the emerging field of genealogical bioinformatics. He has filed five patents for processes that make DNA match data readable by computers, and he’s the recipient of a 2026 Continuing Genealogical Research Grant from the American Society of Genealogists, the first time that grant has been awarded for work in genetic genealogy.

This was a long, rich conversation, so settle in. We think it’s worth every minute.

From Composer to Coder

Arun’s formal training is in classical music composition, with a master’s degree from Columbia University and earlier studies at the Manhattan School of Music. Life had other plans, and he spent 20 years running his own IT business in the New York City area. He dabbled in genealogy when his son was young, but the pandemic gave him the time to dive in seriously. What hooked him was the thrill of turning up facts that no other living person knew.

Elizabeth, who once studied to become a concert violinist, recognized a kindred spirit. Musicians, it turns out, are wired to look for patterns, and pattern recognition is at the heart of Arun’s work.

What Is Genealogical Bioinformatics?

In Arun’s words, it’s how we’ll solve future problems in genetic genealogy, often in partnership with AI. It takes everything we already know about genetic genealogy (none of which gets contradicted), pairs it with information engineering and a bit of math, and models it in a way a computer can actually work with.

Why bother? Because most existing DNA tools work best with matches of 40 cM or more, and those make up only about 3 to 5 percent of a typical match list. Arun wanted a way to put the other 95 percent to work without making anything up.

Expert Systems, Not ChatGPT

Tami asked the question on many listeners’ minds: is this AI? Yes, but not the kind most of us use. Tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, and Claude are generative AI built on large language models. Arun builds expert systems that mimic a human’s decision-making process across millions of data points. (If you’ve used Ancestry’s ThruLines or MyHeritage’s Theory of Family Relativity, you’ve already used an expert system, though those rely on trees rather than DNA.)

That distinction matters. Because his processes only read the data in your matches and do the math, there’s no chance of hallucination. If the pattern isn’t there, the tool won’t invent one.

Putting 18 Cousins to Work

Arun’s advice for getting started: make a chart of every known relative who has tested, and ask them to share their results. He has 18 cousins on one family line who’ve done exactly that, and with their downloaded match lists, his tools can:

  • tell him whether a puzzling match truly shares a common ancestor with his cousins,
  • generate a list of people who match descendants of a brick wall ancestor, but none of his other cousins, and
  • sort those matches into small clusters by which of the brick wall ancestor’s grandparents they connect to.

Using this approach, he identified a very probable sister of his third great-grandmother, from a Jones family married in Westminster, London, around 1800, a search that would have been nearly impossible through records alone.

Try It Yourself (for Free!)

Arun’s tools are free for personal use, and they run in Microsoft Excel. Head to the Bioinformatics page on Discovering New Ancestors and start with CMA, his first process, which includes a downloadable tool and a quick-start guide. The formulas are locked down, so you don’t need to understand the math: paste in your matches, click a button, repeat, then sort the results.

The real investment is your time. Arun recommends getting comfortable with your matches above 40 cM first, and keeping everyone’s results at one testing company (or moving them all to GEDmatch). His fifth process, for endogamy, needs so much data that it really has to be built into a testing company’s back end, which is exactly where Arun hopes all of these processes land someday.

Where to Learn More

Arun is presenting the least technical talk he’s ever assembled, an overview of genealogical bioinformatics and his five processes, as part of the Utah Genealogical Association’s Genealogy ProTalk series on 6 October 2026. It’s free to attend live; UGA members can access the recording. UGA members can also watch his June talk to the DNA special interest group, which walks through the 18-cousin case study in detail.

Listeners are invited to join the Genealogical Bioinformatics Facebook group. You can contact Arun directly through his website.

What We’re Loving

Tami is revisiting old documents and turning them into data tables. A single transcription is just a transcription, but ten documents extracted into tables become a data set you can sort, filter, and compare, making patterns and discrepancies jump out. She uses AI to help extract the data, then works in Excel or Airtable.

Elizabeth’s pick is Ancestoring: Understanding Records, Family, and Ourselves by Darcie Hind Posz, CG®, FASG. This is not another genealogy how-to book. Instead, it asks us to slow down, think about what we do with evidence once we have it, and remember that a person’s life is so much more than the moments that left a record.

And Tami is officially a DAR member! Tami dedicated her membership to her dad, a proud SAR member who always hoped she’d join DAR. Elizabeth, who just celebrated 30 years in the DAR, couldn’t be happier to welcome her.

Teatime: MyHeritage Layoffs + National Archives Closures

Tami addressed the news that MyHeritage laid off about 75 employees, roughly 15 percent of its staff, this summer. It’s unsettling, but it reflects an industry-wide shift as tech companies reorganize around AI, and nothing suggests your trees, DNA matches, or the company itself are at risk.

Then Elizabeth served up some bitter tea: The U.S. National Archives (NARA) is planning to close its facilities in Chicago and San Bruno and move temporary records out of the Seattle Federal Records Center. Records at risk include the Chinese Exclusion Act case files, Angel Island records, internment files, Bureau of Indian Affairs records for Great Lakes tribes (including Indian boarding school student case files), and naturalization records for six Midwestern states, most of which aren’t indexed or online.

What can you do? Visit Save Our National Archives, a coalition that helped reverse a similar plan back in 1998, sign the Change.org petition, and if you’re in the Chicago area, visit the Chicago Area Archivists action page. Contact your member of Congress and ask them to stop these closures.

If a visit to the San Bruno or Chicago NARA facilities is on your “to-do someday” list, make someday TODAY!

This segment was recorded in August 2026. Please check the SONA website for the latest updates.

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RESOURCES & LINKS

Genealogical Publishing Company provided a review copy of Ancestoring. Opinions about the book are Elizabeth’s own.
This episode is sponsored by Vivid-Pix. All product opinions are our own.

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