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As was suspected all along, FamilyTreeDNA has been using the formerly created National Geographic Genographic NGG chip for their FamilyFinder product. And simply stripping the over 10,000 yDNA SNP values from it before delivering results to customers. As of 2024, they have retroactively gone back in and added those SNPs back in. What is the implication? Far reaching as it ends up. Providing a better entry level test than the yDNA STR for most.

As the list continues to expand, we are simply keeping a companion spreadsheet up to date with providers of personal Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) services. As per the supporting personal WGS Facebook group, this is for those companies offering direct to consumer, under $500, 30x (pseudo clinical grade) WGS testing. Track the latest table of vendors in the Personal WGS Vendors spreadsheet. The spreadsheet has been available for over a year. Just now this article to reference and support it.

We are glad to report on the first results coming out of the YSEQ lab of their new WGS tests based on a new MGI DNB-GS400RS sequencer they have purchased. Included here are a WGS400 single-end (15x by design) and WGS+ (30x) tests. These are simply example and not minimum, maximum or average values. They do represent a hope at expected values though.

We have been mentioning sequencing.com as a fourth player shortly after they quietly introduced their $399 WGS product in the summer of 2021. But not really focused on them as they seemed to just be reselling the Nebula Genomics product. While the laboratory services are still from Nebula, the bioinformatics and analysis is all their own. So we thought it time treat them as a separate player.

UPDATED 22 Dec 2021 and 22 Jan 2022
With the release in April 2021 of the first Telomere to Telomere project (T2T) results, we saw the first high-reliability, long-read scan method used to assemble and build a model of a true COMPLETE chromosome (the X). No more gaps; no more N's in the model. Which is very exciting for researchers in the field. The Telomere to Telomere work is in collaboration with the pan-genome project. But is this excitement warranted for the casual WGS consumer at this time? Maybe not quite yet.

UPDATE: Some in the Y chromosome phylogenetic tree community discovered in December a check-in made in November of a nearly final draft of the Allosome part of another sample (HG002). Which has led to a gold-rush mentality among competitors in that community to be the first to discover new variants in the Y chromosome and explore the over 50% that is "missing" in the latest analysis models. But the same issues of waiting apply; even with the supposed final v2.7 posted in mid-January that was then added to a new v2 check-in of the v1.1 T2T model that was missing the Y.

A "Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Clause" response to Jeff Soule's comment to Mags Gauldens' mitoYDNA Facebook group post about a blog post look back at the last 20 years of genetic genealogy.

Many are confused what the RAW Data file delivered by microarray test companies like Ancestry and 23andMe really is. And more so by the BAM and VCF files delivered from NGS / WGS sequencing testing services. Here we try to explain how they are kind of all the same file format but with very different content.