Ah! Ha!

As I suspected -

A letter from Bennett Greenspan:

Dear Family Tree DNA customer

I am pleased to make a very special announcement about our Full Mitochondria Sequence test.

As you know, this test has continually dropped in price from its initial introduction at $895 in 2005.    These price decreases were related to volume and workflow, translating productivity into economies of scale that allowed us to reduce prices to those customers interested in testing their full mitochondrial sequence.

Now Family Tree DNA is doing it again, but this time we are going to take advantage of new technology that will allow us to run more samples in less time, and the savings are substantial.    We expect that this price decrease will hearken a new era of Full Mitochondria Testing for the entire Genealogical community!

We will jumpstart this new era of complete mtDNA testing with an aggressive price in order to build the comparative database to the levels genetic genealogists require to answer precise ancestral and geographic questions.

So now on to the news that you've been waiting for. A new price for the mtFullSequence test will be introduced in November but until then we are offering our current customers a promotional price through October 31st, 2009:

  •      $229 (was $439) for first time mtDNA test takers (the order item is mtFullSequence)

To Order:

Log in to you personal page at www.familytreedna.com

  •      Click "Special Offers"
  •      Select "mtFullSequence" from the dropdown order list
  •      Click "Continue" to proceed to the payment screen and complete your order

Orders need to placed and paid for by the end of the day, October 31st, 2009.

Depending upon the time that it takes to process these upgrade orders using our new hardware, we may experience a back order or lag time in November.  If this occurs we expect to resolve the backlog in December, so to avoid any delay in attaining your results please place your order early in this sales cycle.

Bennett Greenspan
President
Family Tree DNA

So, we have no clue what the price may be in November but at least the intimation is that, both for the upgrades, and for the original test, it will be more than $229.

This is the full mitochondrial sequence, all 16,569 base pairs. Inherited from our mothers.    Once you've done the FGS you will have a definite subclade assignment and a match of your FGS will mean something.

The typical HVR1 & HVR2 tests about 1145 base pairs of the D loop.
As near as I can figure 23andMe tests about 2169 selected mitochondrial SNPs from around the full loop.