Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Phil Grass 👊🇪🇺🕊️ @philgrass.bsky.social · 1d

Also a few interesting snippets from the blog.

1. MH will "re-phase, re-impute and re-match" all existing results (see screenshot)
2. As suspected the WGS is 2x coverage, i.e. "each position in the genome is read twice on *average*", with imputation to fill in the blanks.

1

Phil Grass 👊🇪🇺🕊️ @philgrass.bsky.social · 1d

Glad to see that MH have now added their own blog post on WGS.

blog.myheritage.com/2025/10/myhe...

MyHeritage Upgrades Its DNA Tests to Whole Genome Sequencing - MyHeritage Blog

The MyHeritage DNA test has been upgraded to use Whole Genome Sequencing, the most comprehensive method for reading DNA available today.

blog.myheritage.com

1

Reposted by Phil Grass 👊🇪🇺🕊️

Phil Grass 👊🇪🇺🕊️ @philgrass.bsky.social · 2d

🚨NEW blog post 🚨. I wrote some thoughts on the WGS Sequencing announcement from MyHeritage it's imaginatively titled "Some Thoughts on the Whole Genome Sequencing announcement from MyHeritage". I'd welcome any feedback.

learnalittleeveryday.wordpress.com/2025/10/19/s...

#GeneticGenealogy

Some Thoughts on the Whole Genome Sequencing announcement from MyHeritage

Introduction Recently, MyHeritage announced that they are going to process their autosomal DNA tests using Whole Genome Sequencing, rather than the traditional genotyping arrays. This means, in the…

learnalittleeveryday.wordpress.com

1 2 1

Reposted by Phil Grass 👊🇪🇺🕊️

John Scott-Railton @jsrailton.bsky.social · 1d

3/ Here's a plain language of #Amazon #AWS updates:

12:11AM Pacific: something is up, error rates spike
12:51: Getting worse
1:25: Looks like the hotspot is DynamoDB at US-EAST-1
2:01: It's problem with DNS resolution [Root cause!]
2:22: We've put in initial mitigations, not over yet.

2 14 86

Phil Grass 👊🇪🇺🕊️ @philgrass.bsky.social · 1d

Probably this …

www.bbc.com/news/live/c5...

Snapchat and Duolingo among major apps down in Amazon internet services outage - live updates

Many of the world's biggest apps including Snapchat, Duolingo and Roblox have gone down, in what appears to be an issue affecting Amazon Web Services.

www.bbc.com

1 2

Phil Grass 👊🇪🇺🕊️ @philgrass.bsky.social · 1d

two men sitting at a table with the words yes it 's an extender on the bottom

ALT: two men sitting at a table with the words yes it 's an extender on the bottom

media.tenor.com

1

Phil Grass 👊🇪🇺🕊️ @philgrass.bsky.social · 1d

You have to chuckle at the subtitling from the Times. I wonder what makes the French police *think* the thieves used an extendable ladder to reach the first floor. 🤔

Screenshot from The Times newspaper. Underneath a picture of an extendable ladder leaned up against the Louvre is the caption “French police think the thieves used an extendable ladder to reach the first floor”. 🤷‍♂️

1 2

Phil Grass 👊🇪🇺🕊️ @philgrass.bsky.social · 1d

Not a book, but I can thoroughly recommend The History of the Germans podcast, see @hotgpod.bsky.social

2

Phil Grass 👊🇪🇺🕊️ @philgrass.bsky.social · 2d

🚨NEW blog post 🚨. I wrote some thoughts on the WGS Sequencing announcement from MyHeritage it's imaginatively titled "Some Thoughts on the Whole Genome Sequencing announcement from MyHeritage". I'd welcome any feedback.

learnalittleeveryday.wordpress.com/2025/10/19/s...

#GeneticGenealogy

Some Thoughts on the Whole Genome Sequencing announcement from MyHeritage

Introduction Recently, MyHeritage announced that they are going to process their autosomal DNA tests using Whole Genome Sequencing, rather than the traditional genotyping arrays. This means, in the…

learnalittleeveryday.wordpress.com

1 2 1

Phil Grass 👊🇪🇺🕊️ @philgrass.bsky.social · 3d

That’s what happens if you don’t have Health and Safety inspections. 😀

1

Phil Grass 👊🇪🇺🕊️ @philgrass.bsky.social · 4d

Try watching the 1978 BBC version to make it even more dismal

Phil Grass 👊🇪🇺🕊️ @philgrass.bsky.social · 4d

The disk is on display in the Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte Halle (Saale), which is one of the best/favourite museums I’ve ever visited 👍

1

Phil Grass 👊🇪🇺🕊️ @philgrass.bsky.social · 4d

There’s a good reason @barbaraagrass.bsky.social and I have spent the last couple of days driving back and forth across the width of Germany. 😀

We went to see the fabulous #NebraSkyDisk, one of the earliest (c.1800 BC) depictions of astronomical phenomena linking lunar and solar cycles.

1 2

Phil Grass 👊🇪🇺🕊️ @philgrass.bsky.social · 4d

Schloßpark Teutschenthal. 😀

1 1

Phil Grass 👊🇪🇺🕊️ @philgrass.bsky.social · 4d

The disk is on display in the Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte Halle (Saale), which is one of the best/favourite museums I’ve ever visited 👍

Phil Grass 👊🇪🇺🕊️ @philgrass.bsky.social · 4d

Guten Morgen from Sachsen-Anhalt

1 1

Phil Grass 👊🇪🇺🕊️ @philgrass.bsky.social · 6d

I’m relying on Roberta Estes “Update – MyHeritage has clarified that only kits arriving in the lab in January 2026 are guaranteed to run on the WGS machine”.

1 3

Phil Grass 👊🇪🇺🕊️ @philgrass.bsky.social · 6d

Aargh, I phrased this badly 🤦‍♂️. From January, all kits that are sent to MH should be processed via WGS.😬

1 1

Phil Grass 👊🇪🇺🕊️ @philgrass.bsky.social · 6d

p.s. Looking at the specs, the Ultima Genomics UG 100 Solaris read lengths are "225bp to 300bp+" as per genohub.com/ngs-sequence... (so similar to the Nanopore product IIRC)

For anyone interested in the technology, which uses silicon wafers, there is a video here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Yh-...

Unlocking Large-Scale Genomics with the UG 100 Platform and Novogene's Sequencing Solutions

YouTube video by Novogene

www.youtube.com

Phil Grass 👊🇪🇺🕊️ @philgrass.bsky.social · 6d

Thanks Claire - I found the reporting. 😀

If I understand it correctly the offer will 2x WGS (as per @debbiekennett.bsky.social), although the article from Roberta Estes only mentions 1x WGS.

For those interested, WGS is only guaranteed for kits arriving next Jan.

2 1

Phil Grass 👊🇪🇺🕊️ @philgrass.bsky.social · 7d

Hi #AncestryHour. I'm super excited to see that MyHeritage have announced a switch to WGS (see: finance.yahoo.com/news/myherit...). I have a spare MH test so really hope that MH are doing WGS for all new samples 😀

MyHeritage Upgrades Its Consumer DNA Tests to Whole Genome Sequencing

TEL AVIV, Israel & LEHI, Utah & HOUSTON & FREMONT, Calif., October 14, 2025--MyHeritage is first major DNA company to fully adopt Whole Genome Sequencing. Upgrade uses technology by Ultima Genomics & ...

finance.yahoo.com

2 1 9

Phil Grass 👊🇪🇺🕊️ @philgrass.bsky.social · 11d

FWIW. Normally I would agree with Ancestry, however with the current algorithm I don’t think it applies as the results aren’t fine-grained enough. Most (c.90%) chromosomes seem to be assigned to a single Region, which doesn’t seem to make sense.

1 1

Phil Grass 👊🇪🇺🕊️ @philgrass.bsky.social · 11d

And the M&S plastic bag they were in is probably the same vintage.

Phil Grass 👊🇪🇺🕊️ @philgrass.bsky.social · 11d

Doing some tidying up today and found some of my old #Subbuteo figures (c.1975).

1 3

Phil Grass 👊🇪🇺🕊️ @philgrass.bsky.social · 12d

Hi #GenHour. I have a technical Q. I'm looking at my mtDNA results. Mutations are all recorded AnnnnnD (A is Ancestral, nnnnn is the location, D is the Derived value). Most of the Derived values are upper-case, but some are recorded with lower-case letter e.g. C16259g.What does lower-case indicate ?

2 3