From “Beyond the Economic Model of Marketer-Consumer Co-production:
Consumer Cooperatives in the DNA Marketspace,” by Elizabeth C. Hirschman and Donald N. Yates
DNA ancestry tests of increasing refinement have been introduced within the last decade (Richards and Macaulay 2000; Jobling and Tyler-Smith 2003). This service was a spin-off of the race to complete the Human Genome Project in the late 1990’s. Commercial laboratories benefited from the standardization of genomics testing and economies of scale associated with the HGP, especially high throughput polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, a quick and easy method for generating unlimited copies of any fragment of genetic material. Different tests were developed targeting different sets of genetic markers. As the field grew, companies claimed in their marketing messages that greater reliability and validity resulted from testing ever-larger numbers of markers. Although the number of tests remained essentially the same – male ancestry, female ancestry and world ancestry tests – upgrades became common. Repeat business drove the success of market leader FamlyTreeDNA. In 2007, the cost of tests across all suppliers ranged from $100 to $995. Significantly, this was a sector of consumer activity largely limited to the United States and Canada; virtually all sales were derived from commerce on the Internet.
The magazine American Demographics estimates that there are over 113 million Americans actively involved in tracing their roots (Turner and Smolenyek 2004). Independent research polls indicate that up to 60% of Americans are interested in their family history (Genealogy.com 2000). Approximately 460,000 people have taken genetic tests to determine their ancestry or expand their known family trees according to the journal Science (Bolnick et al. 2007). Perhaps half of these were enlisted through National Geographic’s Genographic Project. A May 2006 nationwide telephone survey by Leo J. Shapiro and Associates found that 1 in 6 Americans (18%) were aware of the ancestry-tracing capability of a home DNA test, but when probed, most knew little about the details, reliability or differences between tests.[1] Annual sales for all DNA testing companies, including the laboratories that support them, were estimated to be in the area of $60 million in 2006.[2]
In 2001, Brian Sykes, an Oxford University geneticist, published The Seven Daughters of Eve; this book popularized the notion of tracing one’s ancestral origins through DNA. The year before, mitochondrial testing to determine female lineages was made publicly available (Richards and Macaulay 2000), and by 2003, Y chromosome testing for male lines followed suit (Jobling and Tyler-Smith 2003). The number of firms offering tests, and the number of consumers ordering them, rose rapidly during this time; in essence, the industry was in the introduction and early growth stages of its life cycle. In the same way biotechnology companies sprang to life in the wake of Herbert W. Boyer’s creation of Genentech in the early 1980’s, companies developing and selling genealogical DNA tests proliferated after Sykes’s startup of Oxford Ancestors in 1997. Personal genetic testing rode the crest of innovations centered on the invention and acceptance of hypertext markup language and the World Wide Web beginning around 1995.
The basis for these tests was, and is, a set of identity markers known as the Combined DNA Index System, developed from about 1992 to 1998 by the FBI and National Institutes of Standards and Technology (Butler 2001). CODIS makers are standard for states participating in the FBI’s crime-solving database. Randomly distributed, they lend themselves not only to the purposes of identity and relationship testing, but also to exploring world ancestry. Use of CODIS markers in conjunction with population databases inaugurated a third major category of consumer tests, ethnotyping or composite-ancestry tests.
GeneTree , founded in 1997, was the first firm making these tests available to the public; it was sold to the Sorenson Companies in 2001 and folded into Relative Genetics, which was itself acquired in June 2007. The acquirer, Ancestry.com, was owned, in turn, by The Generations Network (“Ancestry.com Enters DNA Genealogy” 2007). Sorenson then exited from ancestry testing, but retained GeneTree, renaming it Identigen (DNATesting.com). It was in 1997 also that DNAPrint Genomics of Sarasota, Florida, was launched. Its mission was to commercialize the bio-geographical, and proprietary, genetic markers developed from the empirical work of Mark Shriver, a biogenetics professor at Pennsylvania State University (Shriver and Kittles 2004). In April of 2000, Bennett Greenspan, an amateur genealogist and Houston businessman, started Family Tree DNA in association with geneticist Michael Hammer of the Arizona University Research Laboratories. Hammer was a pioneer in Y chromosome research who spearheaded the establishment of a conventional nomenclature for male haplogroups according to the mutations they exhibited (e.g., R1b, 1, J2; Y Chromosome Consortium 2002). Today, Family Tree DNA today is far and away the sales leader in the industry. Its European website claims that the company carries out 90% of DNA testing purchased by consumers worldwide (www.igenea.com).
Elsewhere in the wider genealogy services sector, Spectrum Equity Investors bought on-line web board Ancestry.com for about $300 million in October of 2007 (“The Generations Network” 2007). Ancestry.com grew in the same timeframe as commercial DNA testing with an initial investment by the venture capital group Infobases in what was then a print publishing company. By the time of its acquisition by Spectrum, Ancestry.com specialized in subscriptions through keyword advertising, search engine landing sites and a host of mirror and feeder sites such as Genealogy.com, Rootsweb.com (not-for-profit) and Myfamily.com. In 2007, it had annual revenues of roughly $150 million and 900,000 subscribers (“Ancestry.com ‘Thrilled’”; Ellis 2007).
[1] Personal communication, George Rosenbaum, 23 May 2006.
[2] Personal communication, Terrence Carmichael, 6 June 2006.