With the roll-out in a bigger way of BigY-700 results late this summer, we are seeing significant refinement of the Phylogenetic Tree. It is returning so many new yDNA SNPs not found earlier that surname studies are finding the Phylogenetic Tree of Haplogroups (termed Haplotree by FamilyTreeDNA) is showing new branching at the leaves within family lines of the last 500 years. So the yDNA SNP testing is no longer just anthropological in value but also genealogical. Early indications were most of the SNPs being discovered were much older and thus higher up in the tree from the leaf nodes. But even if so, there seem to be a few key and critical discoveries among genealogically related people to cause new branching of the leaf or terminal nodes as well.

This new BigY-700 test (sometimes referred to as BigY3) is the most comprehensive yet and done on a completely new piece of test equipment. See the FTDNA White Paper on BigY-700 for more information.

The FTDNA BigY-700 testing is on par with those other Sequencing test techniques of the whole-genome. See the Y-DNA Data Warehouse report of BigY-700 results comparing the various BigY with other Sequencing techniques. Even the Sequencing full-sequencing tests with a 30x coverage depth and 150 base-pair read length are not getting much better coverage (as shown by yFull and similar analysis). The only test that has the potential for better coverage is the Nanopore long-read sequencing technology. But it is so new and error prone, it likely will not be available for use by us for another 3 years.

If your sample is older and used for multiple tests, they may not have enough left to reliably complete the new BigY-700. Keep this in mind if the sample is from a deceased individual. If there is a brother or son of the original tester, they can be used to submit a new sample if you simply upgrade. They should be (near enough) identical.

FTDNA typically offer an upgrade from BigY-500 to BigY-700 for $250. BigY-700 is really a completely new test with new chemistry on a new piece of equipment. So an upgrade is a great deal given they have to retest from scratch anyway. Reminder though: when you upgrade, they wipe out your old result files. Download your BAM file before upgrading and maybe capture your STR results as well. Just so you have them for posterity and comparison after.

For those that did the old, original BigY test, they were offering an upgrade to BigY-500 for $29 last year. You had to ask support to add the order to your kit as it is not listed on the website. The BigY-500 upgrade is simply reprocessing the original test result with later science (for example, mapping to the hg38 versus hg19 model), and does not need any more of the DNA sample. This upgrade is not needed if you plan to upgrade to BigY-700.

Next big sale is usually in late November (Black Friday sale after USA Thanksgiving). (This was posted in September, 2019.)

We now recommend even new testers simply take the BigY-700 and not an STR test first. This because (a) BigY-700 is so comprehensive and useful in the genealogical time frame, (b) is is not that much more cost than a y111 test that is included, and (c) FamilyTreeDNA no longer offers a comparable discount on upgrades from earlier, less comprehensive STR tests. With this latter point, it makes it much more expensive to incrementally test whereas it was essentially free before.

While Dante Labs is still a potential cheaper alternative to complete ALL testing including a deep yDNA test, it has yet to be reliable in delivering results. We are talking of their 30x read depth product. Even once Dante Labs start delivering results reliably, they simply offer the RAW data from the test process which you then have to submit to third-party sites for analysis. While many of those sites (for example, yFull are very useful and becoming more so, FTDNA still represents the largest bulk of yDNA testers to date and thus having access to their match database is worth using their test. Similar how Ancestry is worth it as the only way to get access to their extensive autosomal match database. Full Genomes and YSEQ are others that offer similar product to Dante Labs but at a higher price point than even BigY-700. Unlike Dante Labs, they do offer analysis but no real match database.