View Articles

Dante Labs now has a competitor in the sub $500 WGS 30x sequencing market. Nebula Genomics has announced entering the space and with some interesting twists.

UPDATE 20 Jul 2021: it appears as of a month or two ago, Nebula has started delivering 100 base-pair read length sequence results. Possibly using the downgraded, old MGI equipment of Dante in 2018. This would be a shame if so. We are working to confirm the change is not just a fluke for a few recent testers.
UPDATE 23 June 2020: we received our results after 13 weeks. Find our post explaining everything in the WGS Facebook group.
UPDATE 6 Jan 2021: we received our third result after a slight delay due to a Covid19 outbreak at their lab. But many months earlier than the ordered-same-time Dante test. See our Facebook post explaining 2020's experience.

With the introduction of the below $500 30x WGS test again this month, we return to the debate of whether it will take over genetic genealogy testing as the first and primary method. Key still are the availability of match databases and reliability of the sole sub-$500 provider. But Dante Labs just introduced a 2-day sale at that crazy price of $199 again (9 - 11 Nov 2019)! Is it time to dip another toe in the water? Or jump head first and fully in?

UPDATE1 (24 Nov 2019): $189 for one week (24 Nov - 1 Dec 2019); another 10% off still if you use the code "yfull10".
UPDATE2 (24 Feb 2020): Nebula Genomics and Sequencing.com enter the sub-$500 market as well.
UPDATE3 (28 Nov 2020): $149 for one week for Dante Labs 30x; Nebula Genomics; but delivery problems persist since pandemic started

A lot of noise is being given to FamilyTreeDNA making their Big Tree publicly available in Fall 2018; created from the Y chromosome testing. And now also available as an internal, private Big Tree with a lot more information in Alex Williamson's yTree block format. Here we cover the pluses and minuses of the FTDNA tree overall and the two forms newly available

Due to the new EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that went into effect on 25 May 2018, many genetic genealogy companies and sites have either closed down or made changes to tighten access. In many cases, finally bringing needed privacy to DNA testers that some projects, admins and sites had been pretty lax about. But also now generally disabling the more open exchange of information some had come to rely on. Members of projects we manage must, at minimum, give "Grant Limited Access" to each administrator in the project. Those that leave it as "Group Project Access Only" risk being removed from the project.

We pay tribute to the fallen websites and features that are directly or indirectly (by timing) attributable to the EU GDPR regulation going into effect 24 May 2018. In some cases, this brings better privacy protections that were long needed (in our opinion). In some cases, more the death of a major feature that the community relied on. After the tribute list, we cover more detailed explanations of the individual situations. We will periodically update this post with new information as it becomes available. And change to a saved Wiki page if necessary to retain coverage of the topic.