Big Y-500 STR Matching — DNAeXplained – Genetic Genealogy

Family Tree DNA recently introduced Big Y-500 STR matching for men who have taken the Big Y-500 test. This is in addition to the SNP results and matching. If you’d like an introduction or definition of the terms STR and SNP, you can read about SNPs and STRs here. Beginning in April 2018, Family Tree…

via Big Y-500 STR Matching — DNAeXplained – Genetic Genealogy.

I ordered the Big-Y when it first came out. At the time, my Y-DNA testing had been limited to Y-67 (looking at 67 STRs). I would later upgrade to Y-111 a few years after my Big-Y results and before they renamed the test to Big Y-500 and included the extra STRs. It (Y-111 upgrade) was on sale for $29.00 if memory serves compared to its usual upgrade price of $130.

I found good value in doing both the Big-Y and Y-111 upgrades. Glad to see they now include the Y-111 in the upgrade since a handful of my Y-111 STR markers (I think 20 were missing) weren’t part of my Big-Y STR results before they made the change.  I didn’t have a lot of matches at Y-67 -dozen, and upgrading to Y-111 brought the matches down to 7. With the Big Y-500, I have 5, 8, 9, and 10 matches at different marker levels.

In the future, I would love to test my two (2) brothers at YSEQ.net – https://www.yseq.net/ to see if they match my lowest haplogroup on FamilyTree DNA (FTDNA). Using YSEQ would only cost me $36 + shipping compared to doing two (2) Big Y-500 tests at FTDNA which would run anywhere from $1,000 (on sale) to around $1,500 off sale. YSEQ wouldn’t give me matching, but would show if our lowest haplogroup was the same or if we had slightly different haplogroups at this level. I’m hoping to one day be able to get both of them tested with Big Y-500, but it’s out of the budget for a while.