Living DNA November update: New updated portal launches

The Living DNA team has been super busy behind the scenes and we are delighted to bring you a whole new and updated product experience. This not only helps us today but has been a complete re-engineering for all our systems to allow us to release new features and cope with growing user numbers in 2020. This also set us up with a foundation to support panel updates, which will be rolling out over time.

Throughout November & December, a number of improvements are being made to your Living DNA portal. These changes have been designed to make the portal easier to use for everyone. Different people will be updated in phased rollouts, at first not all features will be live for everyone, but within the next few weeks they will be.

Existing customers: New portal features.

We deeply appreciate everyone who has already tested with Living DNA and we want to highlight all the benefits that you will be getting over the coming months as our platform expands. The products and insights have been explained below, as well as the changes that have been made to your Living DNA portal.

Views of your ancestry

We have consolidated this into the ‘complete’ view. We have chosen to do this because as we continuously develop our research, we are able to increase the strength of our panels. As such, we have chosen to only represent the most specific view, assigning all DNA to a region and a sub-region where available. We have also made it much easier to navigate your sub-regional views so you can easily see these.

You will also have the ability to update to the new version of the Living DNA experience. This will first be rolled out to users based on knowing how the update will affect you, for example, if you have German ancestry, we will give you the option to update to our enhanced German regions for free. Alongside this, there is now a toggle that lets you go between information in the history and legend sections of your portal easily without scrolling down the entire page.

Maps

Maps are better than ever with a completely redesigned map tool. Our new opacity levels show the strength of your ancestry in each region. Our region shapes are also being redrawn to more accurately represent your ancestry and also allow us to start rolling out new region updates.

My Tests page

The My Tests page is now “My profiles” with a cleaner interface. Accounts and profiles have now been clearly separated to avoid confusion if you manage multiple profiles. This means managing your account is much simpler and easier to navigate around.

Motherline and Fatherline

Our Motherline and Fatherline now tells the story of your ancestry as it travels back in time. Your Haplogroups are now on the same page as your map, keeping all your results together in one place.

Uploaders

Uploading your data to Living DNA is now a simple process. You can now easily upload for multiple people, providing that you have full informed consent. For a limited time, we are introducing a continental level of ancestry for our starter kit customers and it is available to all uploaders free of charge for a limited time. This will include a breakdown across 8 regions. Uploaders will then have the ability to upgrade to sub-regional results in the future.

Family Networks: DNA matching

Joining our DNA matching service is now much easier than before. We have now made a simple click opt-in button within your portal that clearly shows you if you are part of Family Networks. Alongside this, you will now have much clearer visibility of your matches and status of results.

New Products and Insights:

Our personalised DNA ancestry book is now much easier to order with a simple click button which has been added into the navigation bar of your portal. The ability to purchase this within your portal is live.

As well as our full ancestry kit, we have now released a new range of physical and digital products that you can purchase to gain better insights into your past, present and future, this includes:

Physical products:

Starter kit

• Your global ancestry breakdown across continents
• The ability to find people around the world who you share DNA with
• A nutrition report determining if your genetics indicate that you are prone to Vitamin D deficiency
• The type of exercise your muscles respond to best

Wellbeing kit

• How your body responds to different vitamins
• How your body breaks down foods to which your body may be sensitive to such as gluten or lactose
• How your body responds to different types of fitness.
• How we can help you understand what type of exercise best supports your body

Wellbeing and ancestry kit

• Receive your recent ancestry report showing the countries and, where available, subregions your ancestors are from over the past 1000 years
• Delve into your extended ancestry exploring the migration paths your ancestors took out of Africa 80,000 years ago through today
• How your body breaks down foods to which your body may be sensitive to such as gluten or lactose
• How your body responds to different vitamins

Digital products:

Ancestry taster

Explore a high-level overview of your ancestry and receive:

• Your high-level ancestry breakdown
• Detailed information about your ancestral regions
• Access to our DNA matching service

Recent ancestry upgrade

Explore a high-level overview of your recent ancestry, with this upgrade you will receive:

• Detailed regional ancestry breakdown
• Historic regional data and maps
• Results within 7 working days

We are working to make these updates as smooth as possible but the platform may have a few glitches as new features are rolled out so do bear with us. There are currently a few pages still hidden while we complete some finishing touches, these include the throughout history page, Phylogenetic tree and some more detailed history information. We will let you know when these are finished.

Thank you for your continued patience and support.