"So explain to me in lay terms what we should be able to do genealogy wise with my genome sequencing from Dante labs please." as asked by Jeff Soule.

Jeff, I feel like my answer to this would be like the response of 120+ years ago: "Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Clause". This response essentially addressing fallacies in the article above, what the real marketplace is, and how mitoydna could change to address the movement going forward. In responding to all three, it causes us to look at this early state of DTC 30x WGS testing in the genetic genealogy community. Too much for a Facebook comment response and so detailed here.

While the article is comprehensive and current with the genetic genealogy major market state-of-the-art, it completely misses the market and science trend of the last 5-10 years in genetics. Unfortunately, very much a rose colored glass look through as provided by one shall-not-be-named company. Any DTC 30x WGS test offers you all offerings in today's genetic genealogy field. Just not directly with the company doing the actual lab test. 23andMe pioneered the 2nd Wave by introducing the microarray testing into genetic genealogy. And from day one supported all that it could offer — yDNA and mtDNA haplogroups, autosomal segment matching, and so on. Just as all genetic genealogists look to extract RAW microarray file format data files from an existing microarray test company (like 23andMe and Ancestry), so must you do so with WGS testing. Just more so. Only YSEQ is becoming closer to providing the tools for use as well as the laboratory test.

Like with Ancestry and 23andMe, you cannot (today) get into the FTDNA yDNA and mtDNA tree with an outside test. But that will likely not be far off if FTDNA is to stay in business. The writing is on the wall. (FTDNA have announced a partnership with Nebula but are seemingly dragging their feet offering it.) Ancestry can survive without supporting external imports. But the market draws them into health and a wider set of users as they saturate the genealogy one. Ancestry's pseudo-NGS health offering is too myopic like Helix and will likely fail in its current form. Unless Ancestryslarge and powerful marketing arm can push it harder without drawing the ire of the FDA like 23andMe did. (UPDATE: In fact, it has since been announced that Ancestrys health product has been removed from the market along with their CEO.) 23andMe started with a wider product offering in genetics but has fallen behind of recent as they work to recover the health reporting. MyHeritage has made many purchases over the years, more than others, to try and grow the enterprise faster than they can on their own. Promethease and SNPedia are an example; showing their desire to expand into health analysis also. Key is genetic genealogy on its own cannot sustain such large companies and their offerings. Only smaller, nimble firms like YSEQ can hope to survive in the niche market.

WGS Extract as a tool is the main bridge today from DTC 30x WGS laboratory testing to the genetic genealogy marketplace and tools. But YSEQ has a strong march forward that is accelerating to provide more of this link directly. The question is can they grow it into a marketplace and continue to make money given their higher native testing costs. Their push and support into the Arab world happening of recent may be enough to take them there in addition to their innovation. They are a perfect acquisition target (of people and tools) for MyHeritage.

You can extract yDNA STRs for mitoYDNA via yFull and YSEQ today. That may become more direct from WGS Extract in the near future as well. Although not there today, a mitoYdna button could be added by WGS Extract once the tool adds yDNA STR extraction. Something yFull has been honing for awhile with YSEQ help. So that import is a bit cumbersome today. Not all the base yDNA STRs can be extracted from WGS tests either. This due to the short-read nature of current NGS technology it is based on. But we are quickly finding STRs of more minimal use compared to strictly deep SNP testing in yDNA haplogroup work.

But Jeff hinted at the real future. And that is going further and deeper with the more detailed WGS test result than can be gained from the microarray test. Can we get more reliable phased results? Can we reliably use smaller matching segments? Some of this relies on rapid improvements continuing in the DNA test science (pan-genome human genome reference models and tool streams, better de Novo alignment, and longer read segments in sequencing to span highly repetitive regions). The latter which may mean retesting the WGS again.

A big thing missing from the look back article are the market factors. Cost being a major one. 23andMe took over the market by dramatically lowering the cost compared to all existing tests and vendors. And greatly expanding the market by providing full genome analysis and a new atDNA segment matching capability. They almost overnight caused a major shift and became the bull in the china shop. They became the largest match DB; something that took Ancestry a long time and many hundreds of millions in advertising dollars to pass years later. And although not recognized for in the above, 23andMe did and still do report using ALL the DNA. Something other vendors are slowly catching up to support instead of throwing data from the laboratory away.

We are so bullish on this viewpoint of the WGS test future, we have already identified WGS being the third wave of test types offered in genetic genealogy. CE being the first and microarray being the second. So CE costs came way down to allow the genetic genealogy market to form and start the 1st wave. But this was point testing for dozens (that is, few) specific, known markers. And focused at yDNA and mtDNA only. mitoYdna was born of this historic effort and market when the public match tools went away (ysearch and mitosearch). The 2nd wave came with the introduction of microarray testing and the coverage of hundreds of thousands of markers across the whole genome. Beside reasonable haplogroup work based on thousands of SNPs (in yDNA; less so in mtDNA), it introduced the autosomal segment matching and ethnicity (ad-mixture) work which has now matured. The 3rd wave of WGS is still in its infancy since making a breakthrough with the under $500 cost in 2018.

yDNA-warehouse is about to launch a full tree service like yFull but focused on yDNA and no mtDNA support. yFull already has the STR matching and the largest mtDNA tree by far. While GEDMatch is there with the tools and site, their database continues to shrink while others grow. Geneanet is a newcomer like them in the analysis only space. MyHeritage is the best site I personally find today; especially if you have recent ancestors in the EU. But they still suffer, like FTDNA Family Finder, with over inflating match strengths based on small overlaps in different test company microarray results. The combo of MyHeritage along with yFull does provide the most complete and helpful package for the 30x WGS test market. In my view, mitoYdna, with their new Wikitree link, has to evolve to support that combined package (today and quickly). But the market is moving quickly and may shift before they have time to adapt. All yFull has to do is turn on a switch to allow ySTR- and/or mtDNA-only uploads and they can replicate everything mitoYdna has today while continuing to offer much more.

There is so much more to mine out of WGS being used in the genetic genealogy market. But today, you will have to live with full-sequence, best in class yDNA and mtDNA results for haplogroup work. And then extracting microarray test files to feed into the traditional 2nd wave market of tools like for autosomal segment matching. WGS Extract can be used to make this bridge today (at least when also in conjunction with using yFull for the yDNA STR extraction). But it is evolving and will continue to expand.