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Surnames Genetically Correlated
Richey writes "The BBC has a story about a scientist who has discovered strong links between your genetic makeup and your surname. To quote from the site: 'This surprising discovery suggests that forensic evidence left at the scene of a crime could be read in a DNA laboratory and reveal the criminal's name.' That seems unlikely, but I'm still glad that my surname's Smith!" Doesn't work on women for some reason.
I'd have to say, I'm pretty skeptical of the whole thing. After all, using the whole genome, it is still difficult to amass sufficient evidence to convict. The only use for genetic forensics that I can see is to rule out people as suspects. Even that is fraught with technical difficulties. For example, although you have found some traces of DNA at the crime scene, it is almost impossible (IMHO) to determine _when_ it was deposited, unless fortune is smiling on you.
In addition, the fact that the Y chromosome is relatively the same across generations (much more than 50%!!) is no big surprise. The only chance for recombination is with the paternal X at/near the pseudoautosomal region during meioses. In other words, only a portion of the Y can actually be exchanged between generations. A large part of it should _never_ change, except due to mutations which occur at a very low rate.
To me, this seems like it would be great for paternity suits involving male babies. But for little else. After all, you first need informative (polymorphic) markers in the non-pseudoautosomal region to even begin addressing this issue. And the Y is the least studied chromosome out there, in genomic term at least.
-Todd
I think you are underestimating the number of base pairs on the Y chromosome. Yes, it is the smallest chromosome, but it should only take about 32 unique sites on the chromosome to identify every male on the planet (or at least every male lineage on the planet) 2^32 = 4,294,967,296.
Two examples I recall from news stories in the last few years:
- With a very high level of certainty, it was determined that at least one of Sally Hemmings descendents had a male ancestor related to, if not one and the same as, President Thomas Jefferson. There was a fairly unique mutation on the Y chromosome. http://www.people.virginia.edu/ ~rjh9u/jeffhemm.html
- A report in Nature determined that jews with the last name Kahn, Cohen, Cohn, and Kohn, (which translates as priest) share a common gene on their Y-chromosome unique to this group of surnames. http://www.fullfeed.com/~scribe/dig est19973.htm
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