FTDNA Holiday Sale 2015

Tis the season to be jolly for ... HOLIDAY SALES and FamilyTreeDNA is the first to light up with savings. See below for all of the great details. 

From Family Tree DNA:
"We're excited to announce the launch of our 2015 Holiday sale! It will start today at midnight and end on December 31st @ 11:59PM Central Time.
You'll find a full list of the sale prices on the FTDNA website. Similar to last year, we're adding a treat to this year's great deals – our Mystery Reward discounts! The Mystery Reward will be a randomized discount (up to $75 off) that can be applied on top of the already reduced Holiday Sale prices. You’ll get a new Mystery Reward every week as well as after making a purchase. You can use the discounts or share them with friends!

The Mystery Reward icon will appear on testers’ myFTDNA dashboard each week. Each code will expire the night before the next Mystery Reward appears. We’ll also send an email notification to the kit’s primary email address when a new code is available for use or sharing."

Holiday/End of Year Sale:

Family Finder - $89

Y37 - $139
Y67 - $228
Y111 - $309

Y37 -> 67 - $79
Y37 -> Y111 - $176
Y67- > Y111 Upgrade - $103

Big Y - $525

mtDNA - $69
mtDNA Full - $169

TYPES OF DNA TESTS SIMPLIFIED! (Videos & Visualization)

If you're a novice or new to DNA testing for genetic genealogy THE VERY FIRST THING you should do is review these five short videos created by the University of Utah. Each video is less than four minutes long and will help you immensely with an inaugural understanding of this complicated field. ALSO take a look at my visualization about the different types of DNA tests following these short videos from Genetic Science Learning Center's Learn Genetics series here. ... Enjoy:

3 TYPES OF DNA TESTS VISUALIZED

A lot of people know about genealogical DNA tests but have no idea there are three main tests to choose from that measure very different parts of your ancestry. So I edited two blog posts to add this screen-grab, which I altered with information to help explain the three different types of DNA tests available. What do you think? Does it makes things slightly easier to understand? If so, share this blog:

(Screen-grab from: http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/chromosomes/types4/. Boxed text added by TL Dixon)

• First, AUTOSOMAL-DNA* (atDNA) Test analyzes your 23 chromosomes to estimate your ethnic contributions inherited from your parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents,16 gg-grandparents, 32 ggg-grandparents, etc., and includes an estimate of your ethnic admixture broken down into percentages, as well as match you to real genetic relatives going back about 500 to 1000 years. 

• Second, MITOCHONDRIAL-DNA* (mtDNA) Test analyzes your cell’s mitochondria genetic code to determine your ancient maternal ancestry; you inherited your mtDNA exclusively from your mother and her direct fore-mothers going back tens of thousands of years to a common ancestral mother. Therefore the mtDNA test is used to determine your MATERNAL HAPLOGROUP ASSIGNMENT (an identifier for mutation(s) unique to your mtDNA organized on "Phylotree" according to an alphanumerical grouping system ie haplogroups B2 or L1b1a or U6a5b for example). 

• Third, the Y-CHROMOSOME DNA* (Y-DNA) Test, only available to males, analyzes his Y-chromosome to determine his ancient paternal lineage via his father and direct forefathers going back tens of thousands of years to a common ancestral father. Therefore the Y-DNA test is used to determine a male’s PATERNAL HAPLOGROUP ASSIGNMENT (identifiers for mutations unique to a male’s Y-chromosome organized on "Phylotree" according to an alphanumerical system ie haplogroups A0 or E-U290 or R1b1a2).

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