 Okay, well here we are for the expert panel discussion session and this is basically going to be a free-for-all. You can throw any questions you like at our expert panel and let me introduce him to you first of all. We have Michelle Leonard. Michelle runs a professional genetic genealogy consultation company in Glasgow in Scotland. We have Donna Rutherford who has set up a fantastic Facebook group DNA Health for Genealogy UK. We have Debbie Kellett who is an author of Cruise News as well as several books and we also have Martin McDowell who is the Educational Officer for the North of Ireland Family History Society and there's lots of other experts in the audience as well. So we'll be talking to a variety of them as time goes on. So please give a warm hand for our expert panel. Sean, did you have a comment or a question? My controversial question has to take my nature and it's very simple. Is ancestry the way forward? Okay, well is ancestry the way forward? Ancestry DNA. Ancestry DNA, so who wants to take that question? I'm going to give it to Martin because Martin did a presentation on this last year. I would say that every DNA test is worthwhile there and I'm not against anyone testing with any company and the idea of everyone should be testing with every company every time and doing every type of DNA test possible. So yes, obviously we can't and what I think you have to be is strategic in terms of money and you have to be strategic in terms of who you're going to be testing. I have a problem with not getting segmented. Now I love people testing ancestry and I love contacting them and I love trying to get them to transfer to one of the other companies and then I'm able to use that information more. I do understand that a lot of people use them in common with links on ancestry. I can't really do that, my top match on ancestry is still what I sent my presentation last year which is 63 sentimentals and there's not much I can do with that. So I don't personally find an awful lot of use from the in common with facility because it only goes down to 4th to 6th cousins. I do have some good matches, they just don't happen to be over here. So while I find ancestry very useful to find matches in other countries, I haven't found it particularly useful over here. I know others have and everyone's going to have a different experience. So I would say, yes, it's definitely got a very major part in the future but I don't think it's to be all and a lot of everything that's coming ahead. And I'm hoping that some of the other companies are going to introduce U2s that are going to give them an added advantage that is going to help them to move forward in a different direction because I'm slightly concerned that everything now is moving towards health and that's not my major focus. And I would like to see some of the companies remain totally focused I think Dick Eastman had a very good matchup on his blog which he said was lots, lots of copies keep stuff safe. I don't think we can trust any single company to still be here in 10 years, 20 years, 30 years time. If you think of something like my space, which was the big thing at one point, that suddenly disappeared, Jeans reunited when I first, or friends reunited, when I first started we were all reuniting with old school friends, that disappeared, anything could happen in the next 10, 20, 30 years. And the more we put our DNA into the different company databases, the more likely it is to survive in the long term. And I think at the moment, we do seem to be having, they do have the biggest market share certainly for those of us with English ancestry, I'm getting the best hits there. But you also have to think about what's happened in the past. So they used to sell microbes of DNA tests to mitochondrial DNA tests. And they discontinued both those tests and all people who tested there, including some people with those family numbers have passed away, they've got the results. But they couldn't have access to the DNA samples. So there's a lot of lost data there. So I think that's just something people really need to bear in mind that nothing is going to last forever. So get your DNA into all the available databases. I just hear what's going on today. So if you're an adopter or a family and you're looking for family, then as of today, ancestry is still the best place to test because of the size of the database. But I absolutely agree with everybody that's getting your DNA to all the databases is really important. But I would still encourage adopters and families to test at ancestry today because of the size of the database. Yeah, I would echo all those points. It's going back to the old adage fished in all the ponds. You just don't know where your best matches may choose to test. And it's important to be in all the ponds. But as Sean's point now, not everybody can afford to test directly at all the companies and especially not at the same time. So always look out for sales. And there are plenty of them through the year, DNA day, Black Friday, etc. Build up your portfolio of tests over time. Start with ancestry. I always encourage people to start there because you can then upload to family to DNA, my heritage, jet match, living DNA, etc. from that one test. And that gets you into all of those databases to start with. But I do think that it is helpful, especially if you have elderly relatives to have them tested directly at companies like family to DNA where they will store the sample for 25 years and things like that. As Debbie says, future proofing is very, very important. At the end of the day, though, ancestry has the largest database by far. And for the majority of us, we will find that we get the most useful matches there. But that isn't always the case for everyone, as Martin has pointed out. Sticking with you, Michelle. Martin mentioned that perhaps in the future, some of the companies will develop new tools that might give them the edge. What new tools would you personally like to see available in the near future? In the near future. There are so many things that's hard to. And there are just little things like I would love to see what Martin was talking about today, the X-chrome zone. That's not available in my heritage. I'd just love to see that there. Simple things that could be done quickly. I'd like to see more integration of classroom tools at the different websites. My heritage has a native one now, but what if we had that ancestry? What if we had that 23 and me? I'd like to see better family, truly facilitate 23 and me. I mean, these are things that I think are plausible in the short term. But I don't know. What do the rest of you think? The thing I would like most at the moment is the ability to very quickly build a tree from your DNA matches. So all of those that have trees attached or have their DNA linked to a tree, that's something will quickly build the tree. So you don't have to sit there and build them yourself. I know they can be quick. We call them a quick and dirty tree. We would quickly build enough a tree for our matches to try and work out in the common ancestors. I'd like some tools to build that quicker. But actually, genetic fears has just started that. I'm not trying to advertise the genetic fears, but they have started doing that. They will try and build that from the DNA matches and have that so when you get your genetic fears cluster, you also get some trees of where they've automatically found common ancestors. That's really helpful. But I'd like to see ancestry incorporate clustering like you said, and that automatically go into us. I'd like to see some sort of version of ancestry's old DNA circles feature because we know that if you have, say, third cousins and fourth cousins, some of those cousins are not going to be genetic matches to you, but they may actually match some of the other people that you match. So it would be really helpful to know if you've got, say, a third cousin who's tested, who's in your family tree, but who doesn't match you, but they may match someone else that you do match. And also, it would be helpful just to know the proportions. So if you've got a particular ancestral couple, and you would only expect to match, say, half the people who are fourth cousins, I'd like to know if I'm getting the right proportions of cousins matching from that particular line. So it may be something to look out for. You end up with all of your cousins matching on that line and you realise there's some sort of problem, and that may need to do with indoctrination or something. But you would expect 50% of your fourth cousins to match rather than 100%. So I'd like to see some way of deploying the power of the networks and these other matches that we can't really access if they're going to a part of that network because they don't match us. Well, I want to say all the made ancestry reconstruction were promised that by my heritage in Oslo a couple of years ago. They seemed to have quietly forgotten about that. They seemed to be moving towards it all. Edson and I, they're moving in the direction of health. And I would like to see them focus back on that. I don't know how possible it is, but I would just love to see somebody come up with a tool that was enabled in that take place. The other thing I would like to see take place is some type of fungional testing. I don't know enough about it. I don't know how much more useful it would be to us. I would love to see some of the companies play about it, see what they could achieve and maybe try to get a market lead by going in that direction. I don't know if it's going to happen in the near future, but it's something that I would like to see and I would like to be able to play around with it and see if it did provide any real benefit or not. Well, I suppose the closest thing we have to that might be a super kit at the Jed match. Do you notice if there's a major difference between a super kit and an ordinary kit at Jed match? And for those of you who don't know, super kit is when you upload your data from ancestry, my heritage, family tree, DNA, and you amalgamate the whole thing together and it gives you many, much more coverage of the chromosomes than would normally be the case with just a single company. I have noticed it's made a significant difference in my matches and maybe if they improve the algorithm, I don't know what can be done, I'm not techy. I don't know exactly how they can do it, but I would love to see maybe sort of improve it in that direction and maybe that's what Jed match will do in the future. I imagine it would cut out a lot of the false matches you might get with the smaller segments, but would it do anything else? No, I think it would just, I would need to be led by the companies and just sort of play around with it, but until we're in the position what's available, I don't think we're gonna really be able to see exactly how useful that would be. And when you talk about ancestor reconstruction, you're talking about, it's sort of like the Lazarus program, the thing that Borland Genetics is doing, where you can reconstruct your grandmother. And that gives, what's the advantage of doing that? Well, I did a presentation a couple of years ago where I was able to show that I had reconstructed a sizeable proportion of my grandmother's DNA. Now, I was able to do that on Jed match, unfortunately the tunnel is not properly working. Now, and what I was able to do at the time was I was able to then lump her DNA through the database and I was able to see who she was. And this was giving me really good results and it was giving me higher sense of the market than what I was getting on any individual kit. So it was a real benefit and it's just something that I think could really help people because if you can collect the segments that people have got in people alive today and you can amalgamate them all together and identify them as belonging to one particular ancestor, then you're going to be able to make progress on that particular family line. That's why we like to see things move. Now, any questions from the audience? Can I just add? Yes, yes. Can I just add a couple of things? One of the things that I would like to see 23 and me do is to upgrade the mitochondrial to Defyla 317, it's on 7 at the moment, which is the 2009 tree. And I checked with mine and looked at some of the raw data to see what the branch split out and it would. So the actual mutation is in the raw data, if they upgrade it, and I think that's a quick fix. But one of the things I'd like to see with sites is if there could be some added incentive in some sort of tools or benefits for people if they put in a little stream or put in some information into their ancestry in order to encourage people not to leave their sites blank. I mean, say how many of us genealogists find it frustrating? You look, the DNA test is there, nothing else there. There need to be some incentive or something or some extra tools or something that. And I'm very conscious that it can be a bit discriminatory towards people that are adopted and people that haven't got information to put up there. But if people did, then it might help those adoptees and families and that as well. So I think they need to do something to give incentive for people on their sites to actually add in some information and not just leave them. I think that's a couple of things. And the other thing I probably like to see is FamilyTree to create an app for iPhones and iPads and stuff like that because for many tests that they're old, they haven't got PCs but they do have that and they can't look at their data because it's too difficult on Safari or on the web browser. So I think getting FamilyTree DNA to provide an easy to view app. It doesn't have to be an editing one but for people just to be able to look at order matches quite easily on a phone or when we were out having a chat how easy it is to bring it up. So I think and the other final thing is segments SuperTree on FamilyTree DNA to be able to add if you've tested your other segments in there and create kind of a SuperTree on FamilyTree DNA I think that would be very useful. That's a few ideas that I would ask. Good, good, good. Gerard has a question over here. Thanks Mark. It's really commenting on Sean's earlier question. In the last few weeks we had 23 me lay off a bunch of staff and for their sales are flat wing and same for ancestry. So, you know, their current model is certainly in the United States is reaching a certain level. So they have to change the business model. So I think the innovation will be in the business model. And I bought a whole genome test for $199 from Dante. So here. And, you know, that's 3000 times the number of steps of an equivalent price product in ancestry. We talked about healthcare, taking over. Well, the healthcare industry is worth $20 trillion. The ancestry industry is worth maybe two million or something. So, they have the resources to invest. So I think the movement is an average flow in that area. I'd like to model up the genetics where they would sequence a whole genome sequence and link it to a blockchain. And anytime anyone uses it, you know who's using your genome. You own your genome. And if a researcher or a pharmacy company wants to use it, they pay you for it, right? So I think that's going to be changing the business model moving forward. Well, it's interesting the point you raised because there has been a slowdown in sales. And we've seen that ancestry, I think in 2018, they sold about 3 million kits over the course of the year. Since the last update, which was January 2019 to January 2020, they've only sold one million. So there has been a slowing down in sales. And like you say, 23 and me have seen a similar slowdown as well. Do you think this is going to continue and that we are now reaching a plateau? And what do you think is the cause of that particular slowdown? All technology, every single technology we've experienced in the 20th century goes through an S-curve. We discussed this online. And this S-curve, in our case, lasts for the decade. So we've reached that plateau and we need to change something. I think the next exponential growth will be free genomes because the data is so valuable that the helicopter companies and so forth will sponsor a free genome. Now, the challenge for the ancestry, industry, not ancestry, DNA, but also then is to use those whole genomes and make them useful to the genealogy community. Because I'm sure within two years to probably be going for it's free. I'm just wondering to what extent, maybe James, you want to comment. To what extent is this market saturation? To what extent is it the concern about law enforcement, privacy, that type of thing? Be interested in if you have an opinion about that and members of the panel as well. I think members of the panel know more about that than me. I haven't noticed a slackening off an order. My project, my surname project, reasons I've never understood, can't stop growing. But it can't go on forever. But on the other hand, we've only tested less than half the percent of the total population. But I do have a more specific question. I'm now finding people coming to my surname project that have been to 23andMe and that had SNPs identified by 23andMe and quite low level SNPs under my surname specific SNP. Now, are they just taking a random cut off? In other words, not uniform. I suspect that's probably what it is. L55, we've got a very old SNP historically. It's not, some of the new SNPs have got very long names, so maybe it's a rather artificial thing. But should we be encouraging FTP, oh sorry, 23andMe, to produce more SNPs in a vertical sense? Can anybody tell me why my SNP has been identified by 23andMe? To me, it's amazing. It's lovely, but I don't understand why. That's a great question for the panel. Who am I sure? Oh, maybe Debbie does know the answer to this question. So on the Illumina chip, the companies can choose to add their own customized SNPs. So I think what 23andMe have done is they've chosen their own customized SNPs for mitochondrial DNA and wide DNA in order to give them a little bit more resolution. Quite how they've chosen those, I don't know, but I know some SNPs don't work very well on microarrays in the first place, so they've probably just taken a version of the tree and just selected a range of SNPs which they think are going to give people useful catapult assignments. And how often do they upgrade them? Well, every time they produce a new chip, so they've moved to a global screening array and as it has a family tree DNA, my heritage has done the same. And we are also supposed to be seeing Weissnick data coming from Family Tree DNA. They promised at their conference last year that everyone who'd taken the family finder test direct with Family Tree DNA, they would have their results upgraded to include the Weissnick and mitochondrial DNA SNP data. So I think that is actually going to be really, really beneficial for our survey projects. If people start getting the SNP data, then that means they will actually be able to participate in the projects and hopefully it will encourage them then to take other tests to see if they match with the Weissnick data. Because there's a huge potential with Weissnick DNA tests and we've got over 30 million people who've taken autosomal DNA tests. We've got 700,000 people in the Family Tree DNA database in our survey projects. So we really need to try and exploit that to encourage everyone to upgrade to do all the other tests as well. And what do you think of the slowdown in sales? I think the slowdown approach is in America. I think it probably has reached a plateau in America. I don't think any of the companies are really doing as much as they could do to promote their tests outside the US. Answers, we probably haven't done quite a bit, certainly in the UK, promoting their product. My heritage has done a fairly good job in continental Europe. But there's a huge world out there and Answers, we only sell our tests in, there's five countries around the world, 23 of me only sell their tests in, it's about 50 something countries in the world. And there's hardly any active marketing there's huge markets in India, which would be brilliant for all the families with ancestors out in India, that's a completely untapped arc, yes. Russia, another huge market in Family Tree DNA, I've got Russians in some of my projects and they're actually getting quite a few matches and there's a lot of, it seems to be a lot of interest. And I think we're being told we have to leave by the benefits of it. No, we've got 10 minutes left. We've got 10 minutes, no? Yes, we do, we finish at five. It's two minutes past five. Right, and on that note, grand, well, we'll end it there for today then, but, you see, time passes so quickly when you're doing something you enjoy. There's lots more that we could talk about. We're gonna have another little expert panel discussion meeting tomorrow. So all that remains for me to say is to say thank you to the expert panel. Thank you to you guys for attending today. I look forward to seeing most of you again. Hopefully tomorrow. Thanks very much.