Family Tree DNA reduce the price of the Big Y test to $595

I wrote at the weekend about the new Y Prime test from Full Genomes which is designed as a competitor to Family Tree DNA's Big Y test. Family Tree DNA have now responded by announcing a permanent reduction in the price of their Big Y test, and they have also introduced a few new features to the Big Y display. Note that FTDNA's Big Y is only available to existing FTDNA customers. It's good to see some healthy competition in the Y-DNA testing market. Here is the text of the e-mail that was sent out to project administrators:

Dear Project Administrators, We are excited to announce the release of a new feature to help Big Y testers refine their matches!  Now, you'll be able to easily filter out matches that aren't genealogically relevant to you. Also, as part of this release we are permanently reducing the price of Big Y to $595.

How it Works

The filter lists the subclades immediately upstream from the tester's terminal subclade.  When a subclade has been selected, a number appears next to the unselected subclades to indicate how far upstream or downstream they are from the selected subclade. A subclade marked (+1) is the next clade upstream from the currently selected clade.  A subclade marked (-1) is the next clade downstream from the currently selected clade.  The number of matches available at each level is listed on the right side of the filter drop down.

To help clarify the hierarchy of the subclades, the haplotree button has been updated to display subclades in the standard haplotree format.  The full tree can be viewed by clicking Go To Haplotree.