Very informative discussion. Maciamo and Dorianfinder, don't take it personal guys.. It's just 2 companies.. You don't own them. Just to confirm if I get it right. From the discussion it appears that Geno 2.0 from the Genographic Project is completely redundant. Correct?
I don't know where you got that idea from. We have not discussed Geno 2.0 in this thread since it was only launched in July 2012, i.e. 7 months after my discussion with Dorianfinder here.
Geno 2.0 is actually the best ancestry test provided by FTDNA at present. Before that, FTDNA tests were either STR and single SNP tests, which are long, tedious and expensive, or didn't test haplogroups at all (Family Finder). Geno 2.0 is the first comprehensive test for Y-DNA that doesn't require customers to select SNP's one by one, but tests large sections of the Y chromosome (as well as autosomal DNA). In that way, it is much more similar to the 23andMe test, but is still twice more expensive than 23andMe (199.95$ against 99$) and like the Family Finder it does not report medical information. The advantage of Geno 2.0 is that it was designed specifically with the aim of improving the Y-chromosomal phylogeny.
So personally I still prefer 23andMe because I think that the medical data is at least as important as the ancestry, but Geno 2.0 has already proved useful in identifying plenty of new SNP's for the Y-DNA phylogeny.
I tend to be a bit cynical about the way FTDNA sells its products. Everything seems to be designed to extract money from gullible or overly eager customers. The
1000 Genomes Project and its follow-ups (will) provide all the full Y-chromosomal sequence (50 million SNP's), which will make the 12,316 Y-SNP's of Geno 2.0 look like a joke. It wouldn't come as a shock to me if a company like FTDNA already had access to enough full Y-chromosomal sequences and knew which SNP's could be included in the future phylogeny. How else would they select 12,316 Y-SNPs (actually half, since over 6000 were already listed by the ISOGG tree before the test was released) out of 50 million and know that exactly these would be relevant for the phylogenetic tree ? Amazing luck ? I don't believe in that.
The strategy is to make amateur genetic genealogists feel like they are the ones making the discoveries and making them pay for the privilege. When a handful of new SNP's are added to the tree each month, these become available to order for customers who original took the STR test. Many will end up paying more than 199.95$ to test all the possible SNP's for which they
could be positive. I never liked that kind of game. That's almost like gambling. It may be exciting, but you always lose money. Sometimes I feel that it is because of commercial companies like FTDNA that we don't have the much-awaited 1000$ whole genome sequencing yet. We were expecting it for 2011, and it doesn't look like it will be for this year or next year either. Of course that would be terrible business for the like of FTDNA. If the WGS is only 1000$, then how much for a whole Y-chromosomal + mtDNA sequence ? Under 100$ ?
23andMe announced the imminent release of the
whole exome sequence for 999$ in September 2011. That is almost as good as the WGS for the purposes of population genetics or genetic genealogy. I wonder what is taking so long. Other companies like
Otogenetics already lowered their price for the whole human exome to 698$. Too bad they don't provide the same kind of customer-friendly applications and reports as 23andMe.
