MyHeritage Upgrades Its DNA Tests to Whole Genome Sequencing

[familydar]

I've had a reply from GEDMatch.  It's quite comprehensive and much of it is beyond me but I've asked for permission to copy it here where there are numerous better brains than mine.

The bottom line of their response is that they won't be rushing in to anything.  If/when they grant permission to copy their full narrative here I'll do so.

Jane :-)

[4b2]

It is often quoted that we all share 99% of our genome, that would leave 30 million points of difference, will these all be tested ?

From what I've read these cira 700,000 point tests look at the most relevant parts for autosomal matching. I also read that full genome tests allow for better accuracy and more matches, particularly lower cM matches. And apparently full genome can be used to find IBD at much smaller levels, like 2cM.

This might make it much easier to figure out where certain groups of matches fit in. On Ancestry, you get clusters of DNA matches, typically sub-30cM, where no matches overlap with other clusters. Those clusters always seem to be more in the window of 1725 or earlier for the MRCA. With full genome, I would guess you'd get a bit more overlap with them, and thus more idea where they overlap. With the current system, often 6th cousins have no overlap with 5th, 4th, 3rd, etc. cousins.

The biggest issue would be that we're obviously well past peak DNA testing. There's not much reason for people who have been tested and don't really care about genealogy to test again, which I think is the lion's share of people tested.

I guess the main marketing angle would be trying to push the Y-DNA and mt-DNA angle. I have four Y-DNA tests, and using the coordinates available you can construct at least generally accurate migration paths. I've written up about life on those paths. Giving people that, I think, would be a good selling point.

But it would really be 10 years or so before anyone could build up a decent full genome database. Hopefully MyH give Ancestry a good push, to move on from trying to upsell basic features for £100 / year.

[Zaphod99]

Hello, where did you get the information for the middle paragraph about peak DNA testing?

As the test price plummets, (MyH £27, Offer expires November 28, 2025) more and more people seem to be going for the tests. The quality of the questions on different forums, has absolutely dived, to the extent that I've left them all apart from those run by acknowledged experts in the field.  The more middle of the road ones have become hopeless. There are so many people buying tests, not knowing what they are paying for, not understanding the information they get, and certainly they don't know how to analyze the information.  I also feel, no statistics to support that, that you read a new DNA shock horror story each week in the low end of the media.  That suggests that it has becoming a more general topic, and I would guess based on increasing sales.

I've had tests with My Heritage and Ancestry and I've just received a second My Heritage test, which I will be returning once they confirm that it will be analyzed for the whole genome.

Zaph

[Steve3180]

Zaphod, to jump in and answer your question, Leah Larkin on her blog https://thednageek.com/how-are-our-databases-doing/ tracks dna database sizes and to quote her -

"Long gone are the heady days of early 2018, when DNA kits were flying off the shelves. By my estimates, from February to March 2018, AncestryDNA alone was adding nearly 28,000 DNA kits per day. Had they continued to grow at that rate, their database would have more than 80 million people in it!"

[Glen in Tinsel Kni]

Ancestry added more results in a couple of years than MH have managed since first offering dna testing but are the genuine researchers still buying kits in any quantity?

Forums like RC are much quieter now than they were largely (in my opinion), down to the ever increasing number of social media groups but as Zaphod points out the quality of those groups is often very poor. Just because Doreen in Bradford has a match of 1700cM that's a half sibling she thinks everyone else with a match at that level has a half sibling and won't be convinced otherwise whilst John in Birmingham cannot accept a prediction is anything but an undisputable fact

As time goes by I feel there is less of a family history community than ever before, too many beavering away in silence trying to fathom mystery dna matches, a large percentage of tree viewers are anonymous and the odds of a reply to a message on a par with winning the lottery. Is it far more secretive now than it was pre dna or am I just interpreting things wrongly? 

[Romilly]

Yes, I agree that Family History Forums seem to have shrunk in size since the advent of DNA testing. Whereas once people slaved away trying to follow paper trails that often led to dead ends, - DNA can often give new leads. I would certainly never have guessed at my Paternal Grandfather’s name change!
My impression is that DNA testing is much cheaper and more popular in the USA and Australia for example, than it is in the UK and the rest of Europe.
I too have now left all of the FB DNA Forums that I signed up to initially when I was trying to work out what it all meant. I don’t think that it’s necessary to study DNA to PhD level to make sense of your matches!
I think that whole genome sequencing is the next progression from DNA testing and it’ll be interesting to see what happens with the My Heritage offer. I have now received my kit and will probably send it back in the next few weeks. I’ve already uploaded from Ancestry to My Heritage and so the DNA in itself won’t tell me anything new.
Romilly.

[Zaphod99]

The other reason I left Facebook was the speed at which innocent threads turn nasty.  Yes. It happens on all forums, but FB does get so unpleasant quickly.

Zaph

[goldfinch99]

Does anyone have any idea when the first results will be in?  Anyone who's done the new test got an estimate?

Anyone know if it definitely gives mitochondrial and Y-dna?

I've done an Ancestry test and put my Ancestry data onto MH.  A lot of my paternal grandmother's family are on there but not many from other sides.  I've found Ancestry to be about 99% accurate in matches and maybe 90% in which side of the tree they belong to and I've found out so much.  There's still ancestors from pre 1850s that I'm not getting matches for so I wonder if the new MH test would help with things like that.

At this price I just want to find out for myself what the results look like and how to work with them and then I can wait and see if new matches come in eventually.  So I think I'm gonna go for it.

[Zaphod99]

I've seen nothing suggesting it gives mitochondrial and Y-dna.  That would really change the whole market place.  I'm not expecting it imminently.

My kit has arrived but I'm in no rush to swab.  I want to be sure I get the whole new testing.

I just like trying new tech.

Extract from GPT:

"IF your kit was processed under the new WGS system (post-upgrade):

Your data in theory will contain the full genome (autosomes, mtDNA, sex chromosomes).

However — at the moment — MyHeritage seems to emphasise autosomal matching and ethnicity; they have not clearly committed to providing full mtDNA / Y-DNA haplogroup reports (or deep-line paternal/maternal tree outputs).

That means even with WGS, you may not automatically get the detailed mtDNA or Y-DNA lineage insights genealogists value."

Zaph