Whole Genome Sequencing or a Consumer DNA Kit

Message us about a kit result you already have, or call 020 3951 3429.

When to get help today

A DNA result is never an emergency and a symptom can be. If you have chest pain, breathlessness at rest, or you lose consciousness without warning, call 999 or go to your nearest emergency department today.

If a kit has told you something frightening this week, that is a reason to speak to a clinician quickly rather than to search for more of the same online. Send us the report and someone will read it.

What a consumer kit does well, and it is more than clinics usually admit

Dante Labs lists a 30x whole genome at €399, about £340, on dantelabs.com. Sequencing.com lists $379, and SelfDecode and Nucleus both list $399. All read 8 September 2026. At that depth those laboratories are reading the whole genome, not a fragment of it, and the letters they produce are the same letters a clinical laboratory produces.

Anyone who tells you a consumer kit reads a different genome is wrong. The chemistry is commodity, its price has fallen for twenty years, and a consumer laboratory now lists a whole genome at under £400.

So the argument for paying more has to be made somewhere other than the sequencing, and if a clinic cannot make it there, do not pay them.

The one technical difference worth understanding

Not every kit sequences. An ancestry array reads a chosen set of positions across the genome rather than every letter of it, which is why it is cheaper again and why it cannot find a variant nobody put on the array. A 30x whole genome reads every position about thirty times over, so a rare variant nobody was looking for is still in the file.

Ask any provider which of the two they are selling you, in those words. A report that talks about traits and ancestry percentages is usually an array. A report that offers you a raw data download measured in gigabytes is usually a sequence.

Five things that differ after the sequencing

Who reads it. A clinical genome is sequenced in a laboratory accredited to ISO 15189, which is an audited standard covering quality and competence rather than a description a company writes about itself.

Which list it is read against. Ours is read against the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics secondary findings list at version 3.3, published in Genetics in Medicine in 2025, which names 81 genes where a finding changes what a doctor does. A named list at a named version can be checked. An undisclosed gene list cannot.

Who explains it. A registered genetic counsellor speaks to you before the sample and again after the result. That conversation is where you decide what you want to know before you are able to know it, which is not a decision to make while reading a dashboard alone at night.

Whether anyone acts. A general health check on its own does not lower mortality, across 251,891 people in the 2019 Cochrane review by Krogsbøll and colleagues. Information that changes nothing changes nothing. Here a doctor writes the plan into a record the clinic already holds, and the specialist referral happens from inside that record.

Whether it is read again. Evidence moves and a stored genome does not. Every year the file is re read against what has been learned since, without a second sample. A consumer report is a document dated the day it was generated.

Message us about the difference in your own case

What a consumer report will not carry

Pharmacogenomics done properly is the clearest example. Prescribing against a pharmacogenomic report cut clinically relevant adverse drug reactions from 28.6% to 21.5% in the PREPARE trial, 6,944 patients across seven countries, an odds ratio of 0.70 with a 95% confidence interval of 0.61 to 0.79, published by Swen and colleagues in The Lancet in 2023. That is roughly a 30% reduction in the odds and about 7 percentage points in absolute terms, and the trial was open label with randomisation clustered by country and site rather than by patient.

That result depends on the prescriber holding the report at the moment of prescribing. A PDF in your downloads folder is not that.

The proportion of people with something to act on is high. Van Driest and colleagues genotyped 9,589 people at Vanderbilt and found 91% carried at least one actionable variant across five gene and drug pairs, published in Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics in 2014, rising to 96% in African American patients.

What you can do with data you already have

If you already have raw data from a kit, it is worth something and it is not worth everything, and the difference is worth knowing before you spend again. Here is what we would tell you about it, at no cost to you and whether or not you become a patient.

It is worth keeping. Download it, store it somewhere you control, and note which laboratory produced it and at what depth. If it is an array rather than a sequence, note that too, because it changes every question that follows.

It is not worth treating as a clinical result. Third party interpretation sites will re read a consumer file and hand you a long list of variants, most of which are of uncertain significance. A variant of uncertain significance is neither a diagnosis nor an all clear, and acting on one is how people end up buying scans they do not need.

We will read a file you already hold and tell you honestly what it covers. We do not build a clinical plan on a file we did not commission and cannot audit, because read depth, coverage gaps and variant calling all differ between laboratories and we cannot verify any of them after the fact.

What we would do

One. A conversation with a registered genetic counsellor, at no charge, before anything is taken and before you commit to anything. Bring the kit report if you already have one, because it changes what is worth doing next.

Two. Saliva at home or a blood draw in Marylebone, sequenced at 30x in a laboratory accredited to ISO 15189.

Three. The result read with a doctor, written into your record, and re read every year as the evidence moves.

Start with the first conversation

Message us to book the first conversation

Questions people ask

Is a £340 whole genome kit the same as a clinical whole genome? The sequencing is comparable at the same depth. Everything after it differs. A clinical genome is read in a laboratory accredited to ISO 15189, interpreted against the ACMG secondary findings list at version 3.3, explained by a registered genetic counsellor, acted on by a doctor, and re read every year. Tiers here start at £4,995.

What is the difference between a DNA kit and whole genome sequencing? Many kits use an array, which reads a chosen set of positions rather than every letter, so a variant nobody put on the array cannot be found. A 30x whole genome reads every position about thirty times over. Ask which of the two you are buying before you pay.

Can I upload my consumer raw data instead of sequencing again? We will read it and tell you what it covers, at no charge. We will not build a clinical plan on it, because read depth, coverage gaps and variant calling differ between laboratories and none of that can be verified afterwards.

My kit says I carry a variant. Is that a diagnosis? No. Most variants reported by consumer interpretation are of uncertain significance, which is neither a diagnosis nor an all clear. Around 6% of people carry a finding on the ACMG list that changes what a doctor does, on a cohort of 3,972 exomes read against version 3.3 of that list, Genetics in Medicine, 2025.

Does a consumer kit include pharmacogenomics? Some produce a medicines report. What they do not produce is a report in front of the person writing your prescription. The PREPARE trial's reduction in adverse drug reactions, Swen and colleagues, The Lancet, 2023, depended on the prescriber holding the result at the moment of prescribing.

Will you tell me not to buy the clinical version? Yes, when that is the answer. A healthy 30 year old with no family history and no medicines is buying reassurance rather than information, and we will say so before you pay rather than after.

Who owns the data? You do. The raw data is downloadable and it is deleted the day you ask. A finding in it is also information about your parents, your brothers and sisters and your children, and the counsellor helps you decide who to tell.

Message us before you buy either one, or call 020 3951 3429.

This page is information and not a diagnosis. Sequencing does not replace examination, history or blood work, and no result guarantees an outcome. If you are unwell today, see a doctor today. In an emergency call 999.

References

Swen JJ, van der Wouden CH, Manson LE, et al. A 12-gene pharmacogenetic panel to prevent adverse drug reactions, an open-label, multicentre, controlled, cluster-randomised crossover implementation study. The Lancet, 2023;401(10374):347-356. 10.1016/S0140-6736(22)01841-4

Van Driest SL, et al. Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, 2014;95(4):423-431.

Krogsbøll LT, et al. General health checks in adults for reducing morbidity and mortality from disease. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2019. 10.1002/14651858.CD009009.pub3

American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics. Recommendations for reporting of secondary findings in clinical exome and genome sequencing, ACMG SF v3.3. Genetics in Medicine, 2025.

ISO 15189:2022. Medical laboratories, requirements for quality and competence. International Organization for Standardization.

Clinical Pharmacogenetics Implementation Consortium. Published gene and drug guidelines, cpicpgx.org, read 8 September 2026.

Dante Labs. Published 30x whole genome list price, dantelabs.com, read 8 September 2026.

Nucleus and SelfDecode. Published whole genome list prices, read 8 September 2026.

Sequencing.com. Published whole genome list price, read 8 September 2026.

The London Genetics Centre. Published whole genome sequencing price, thelondongeneticscentre.com, read 8 September 2026.