Did you see Whole Genome Sequencing by Dante Labs is $149 for Black Friday?

Question

Here is the link:

• https://us.dantelabs.com/collections/advanced-dna-tests/products/whole-genome-sequencing?variant=31588228759618

You cannot beat this price, although you have to do lots of technical work to use it, so not for the non-technically inclined.  There are tools to extract GEDmatch.com super kit as well as tools to extract the yDNA info for males and mtDNA info.  This test covers all of your DNA 30x times and creates an approximately 60 GB BAM file.  This is like getting BigY-700 (for males), FamilyFinder, and mtDNA tests at Family Tree DNA all combined into one test.

Comments

This is still up with no listed expiration so it might expire today or it might expire on Monday.

Answer 1

Holy cow, batman, that is a SUPER deal.

I believe I paid twice this price in June last year, and that was the cheapest I had seen it until today. Warning: It took 8 months to get the results, but the wait was worthwhile.

Comments

My tests from last December only took about 2 months to complete.

Answer 2

I see the offer is still there but I am not sure what the advantage is for genetic genealogy.  There was no mention of phasing,  If the results were phased, I would certainly jump at the offer, otherwise, it seems this test is only good for health reports.

Comments

The advantage for genealogy is that it covers 100% of your DNA, including yDNA (for men), mtDNA, and 100% of autosomal DNA.  The consumer kits, like sold at Ancetry.com, 23andMe, etc., only cover about 92% of your DNA.  They pick a proprietary subset they have decided is most important for genealogy.

At $149, that compares very favorably to the sale at FamilyTreeDNA which has $379 for yDNA BigY-700, $130 for mtDNA, and $41 for Family Finder if you bought all 3 at the same time in a bundle to get that price, total would be $550, compared to $149 at Dante, that is an amazing good deal.

Now, you have to be technically inclined to take the RAW BAM file you get from Dante and process it to get a GEDmatch.com anything kit, convert it to HG38 and export to a site like yFull.com to get yDNA and mtDNA matches, etc.

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Phasing is a process you can do at GEDmatch.com when one or both of your parents is tested, you can use their test to phase your autosomal DNA into a paternal and maternal portion.

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Dante does sell health reports, but I ignore that portion of their service and do not buy any of the add-ons related to health screening.

Getting an ~60GB BAM file that has every single portion of your DNA is the big advantage where each location is measured 30 times for higher accuracy, it is a professional grade test.

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RE: Phasing: Therein lies the rub, both parents are deceased and neither was tested.

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I have done several autosomal tests, plus mt-DNA and BIGY and  I already have combined autosomal super-kits, so I don't see where whole genome gives me anything that I do not already have.

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If you have BigY-700, mtDNA full sequence, and super kit, then Dante does not add as much.  However, it will give you 100% autosomal at 30x at each location for higher accuracy and full coverage.  The commercial testing sites each cover around 92%, so if you combine several, you might get up to say 95% coverage (they tend to leave out similar sections). For BigY, you will get a few more novel SNPs than FamilyTreeDNA finds which can be handy for pinpointing where you match up with others.