Slashdot Mirror
DNA Testing Of Deep Ancestry
Randall Burns writes: "
Oxford Ancestors, founded by world-famous University of Oxford scientist
Bryan Sykes has announced the public availability of an inexpensive($US 180) service that will trace matrilineal ancestry using DNA tests. Applications include forensics, genealogy and research of history. Coverage includes a recent BBC story. The currently available test can trace matrilineal ancestry back to one of seven women who lived 150,000 years ago to which 99% of all people of European descent can trace their ancestry."
I wonder if there's anyone that all Slashdoters can trace their heritage to. I mean, there must be some kind of abacus hacker whom we can all identify with. Or maybe some cave painter who realized that we need to find out new ways to live...
Anyways, couldn't this information be used for discrimination by corportations and other entities? Or is the information only available to the person who requests it? I mean, what if someone was traced back to a Neanderthal who lived in the Great Rift Valley? Some people could mistake that as the person being African-American. Of course this doesn't happen easily, but it's a possibility the conspiracy theorists out there can ponder on.
--
Vote for mind21_98 this November
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
But of what REAL use is this? If it could tell me more about my family, and how they got here, and where they actually came from, THAT would be useful.
Hey Rob, Thanks for that tarball!
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." - Jed Babbin
99% of people come from one of these seven women? Man, they must have been huge sluts! :)
Seriously, I don't see the point of this. When people want to trace their ancestry, they're mostly concerned with who their great great grandparents were and who their relatives were that lived during the Civil war, not 150,000 years ago. Yeah, it's cool, but nothing I'd pay $180 for.
who my great great great great great great great great great great great ..... great great great .... great great parents where. I guess, they were great.
... ancle's brother is Bill Gates.
On the other hand I can see how some people could be disapointed to find out that their great^n n->inf was some OOG who built the StoneWedge, or maybe even that their cousin's mother's brother's father's sister's daugter's
You can't handle the truth.
Can this technology help us finally figure out what species Janet Reno is?
BYU start a similar study earlier this year. It's a race! ;-)
It would be nice if there actually was a lineage traced all the way back to those seven women. As it is, all the deep-test shows is that you're part of one of seven groups...but there's no information as to whom those seven women really were. No names, no family info, nothing.
Scientists at the University of North Carolina have used a similar method of DNA testing on subjects in the Appalachian region of N.C., S.C, and VA. - they have come up with quite the revalation, tracing over 200,000 young "toothless" midget children to the same "Maw and Paw."
FluX
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
SILLY SLASHDOTTER, WHY YOU NO PAY ATTENTION!!! OOG BE FIRST SLASHDOTTER IN RECORDED HISTORY, EVEN BEFORE TACO CREATE SLASHDOT!!! EXCEPT OOG NO LIVE IN GREAT RIFT VALLEY, THAT JUST BASTARD COUSIN OF MINE (RIFT VALLEY HAVE SHITTY INTERNET ACCESS, OOG DEMAND BROADBAND)!!! ALTHOUGH SHITTY GENE TRACING PROGRAMS NO MENTION OOG, OOG BE REAL ANCESTOR!!! OOG BREAK HEAD WITH OPEN SOURCE CD AND POST SLASHDOT SINCE MAN FIRST EVOLVE!!!
OOG WONDER HOW DARE YOU OVERLOOK YOUR HERITAGE!!! WHY YOU BE UNGRATEFUL BASTARD!!! IF NOT FOR OOG YOU NO HAVE SLASHDOT ACCOUNT WITH +1 BONUS!!! OOG DISSAPPOINTED IN YOU!!! AS OF TODAY OOG CUT YOU OUT OF INHERITANCE OF OOG FAMILY FORTUNE!!! OOG SUGGEST YOU SHOW MORE RESPECT TO CAVEMAN ANCESTOR!!! PERHAPS OOG ALSO SHOW YOU DISCIPLINE BY BREAK HEAD!!!
OOG THE OPEN SOURCE CAVEMAN!!! OOG BREAK HEAD WITH OPEN SOURCE CD!!!
Aren't we all descendants of those 7 women?
So i can trace my roots back far enough so that i could actually be related to OOG the caveman or Jon Katz. I think I'll pass. But better OOG than Katz. OOG is a caveman, but Katz is just an idiot.
Chaos, Mayhem, and Destruction: Not
Actually, there is already legislation protecting a persons DNA from being used agains them as a form of discrimination. Businesses may not genetically test people for screening. I believe this also applies to the insurance community but i may be wrong.
As far as being African-American. Unless you're planning on carrying a cross through your neighborhood in celebration of our happy little christian holiday on Sunday, you'll probably admit that life pretty much began in and about africa/fertile crescent. thusly - YES! we are all indeed African-American (or black as i like to say) in heritage. Damn - i'll bet that really pisses people in the KKK off....oh well, i guess now they'll just have to lynch themselves!
FluX
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
This is all in what time period ? hundred's or thousands of years ago ?? what about from a Christian's point of view ?? on the Biblical creation of earth, where man was given life in the past 4 - 6 thousand years ??? How can this dna test be sooo sure... carbon date testing was proven false... but us as the nieve human species believe what we are told, by scientists...
SO there are 7 women 150,000 years ago....my question...did Dick Clarke impregnate them all on the Rockin' New Years 148,000B.C. ? But think 150,000 years of evolution and we have "who wants to marry a millionaire" go figure
Chaos, Mayhem, and Destruction: Not
I don't believe there was such thing as a whore. Those were simple days, old days, days of peace and inbreeding, nothing fancy. One OOG and seven chicks. No feminism, no shovinism, no sexuality (seriously. It was invented during this century by Freud and implanted into the culture as Foulcaut explained.) The only problem was not to get killed by a saber toothed tiger while hunting down a mammoth. Anyway, those people were way purer in heart than ALL OF US, although they would kill and maybe even eat you while you're bleeding to death. Chew on that.
You can't handle the truth.
I can finally prove that I am Rob long lost cousin
http://theotherside.com/dvd/
Personally, I am deeply offended that Slashdot does not recognize the validity of psychics. I mean, for only $4.99/min I discovered who my ancestors are, plus I found out that my g/f was possibly cheating on me and a long trip is in my future!
Now moderate this up before I pour hot grits down your pants, sailor!
Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
Its so cheap that all the men in one town in Australia are to be DNA tested to help solve a rape case. It turns out the someone admited doing it just after a DNA sample was taken.
This makes me wonder just where that DNA info is going and how well it will be tracked. I know labs can screw up (remember your chem lab assistant - they are now doing this for a real living).
I once had a drug test when I was considering working for GTE in Florida and I got a call from the lab saying they had got the names on the covers mixed up and if I wouldn't mind, they would send me a new cover that I could sign my name on and they would put it with my sample. Yea Right. With DNA the results will be absolute because everyone knows everyones DNA is different.
Why does it matter where you came from? You're not going back there. Does it matter if some relative of yours was famous? No. What matters is what you do with your life not what some relative did with their's.
This is interesting from genetic stand point, if for no other reason so it can shut up racists. Imagine testing them and saying something along the lines of "Well you're descended from a little European genetics and a lot of African." As long as they keep video tapes of their reactions I would be happy. Remeber it's not what you come from and what you've done. It's where you're going and what you're going to do.
Mom gives you your mitochondrial DNA which makes tracing maternal ancestry relatively easy. Paternal ancestry is harder since Dad only contributes sperm and blood type components. So, even tho' we can tell who your great-to-the-nth-power grandma is, I'm afraid we still don't know who's yer daddy.
//
--// Hartsock
Live to Code, Code to Live!
I'm hoping you're just being humorous and joking about OOG and Katz.
What separates you from an idiot? Not to troll, flame, or whatever, but inside you/me/he/they/us is about the same chances for genius, idiocy, murderers, parents, children, etc.
Fine, you don't like Katz, that's just a personal thing. But I really hope this was a thought out comment, and not an innate, subconscious thread of your personality...
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
I think his post was only meant for those who watched MadTV last night...
--
This
'Eve' probably isn't intended to refer to the actual biblical personage.
For instance it was shown using mitochondrial DNA studies that everyone can trace their ancestory to one women (believed to be from central africa I think). This didn't involve any of her actual DNA just comparisons among currently living DNA.
My guess is such a service, if it is real, is using similar techniques. Who these seven women are is probably unknown their existance is merely deduced from currently availible DNA. If it is indeed the same technique it means that it can only show maternal ancestory (they look in the mitochondrial DNA which can he inherited directly from the mother).
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Gee, SEVEN women? Adam had quite a harem!!!
--
I am of course reminded of the movie Gattica. A rather grim 1984ish prediction of the future, done Hollywood-style. Still it was a good movie, and raised some interesting points.
Even though it was "illegal", as it is in America today, for companies to discriminate based on genetic information, it still happened. Genetic information was so easy to get, people litteraly leave their genetic information everywhere they go in the form of tissue that is continually being shed (hair, skin, etc...). Just as today, discrimination still occurs based on race and sex, even though its illegal, discrimination can still occur. I think that it is very likely that, as technology advances and allows tests to be performed on minimal tissue very cheaply, this kind of test will become quite common in the business world. As the main character in Gattica states, and I'm paraphrasing, "why spend all that money training an employee who will die 10 years later of a heart condition."
All I can say is that I hope I have a healthy DNA record, for my children's and children's-children's sake.
Spyky
Or even they've managed to find a sequence of mtDNA that all Europeans have. It's hard to see how they can figure that 150K years ago there were only 7 or so women in Europe who's children managed to survive. I'm betting they're finding characteristics that are shared in general among Caucasians rather than characteristics of a particular family line. But who knows.
But that's my point. (You think)Katz is an idiot. He's not being spectacularly different than you or I, and doesn't deserve the label any more or less than we do.
/. is today. I don't mean to take /. seriously, I mean to take you seriously, because you are a person/entity, and /. is not; it's a collective, and emergent response behavior of all the yous and Is on the site.
If we are his peers, we can judge him. But if we are truly his peers, we realize we are just like him at some level, and any judgements we can make are hollow, pointless, and empty. Of course, if we aren't his peers, we actually have very little basis on which to judge him, then.
I don't begrudge the OOGs or the Katzes, both are part and parcel of what
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
[luke skywalker]
NOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooo! ! ! ! !
;)
___
But this only tracing through the mom, so it can only take one path.
...because it sounds pretty useless.
Sure, DNA tracing will give you mathematical probabilities about where/when a hypothetical ancestor lived--but no amount of "historical research" is going to find that person. We don't have DNA samples of "third peasant from the left, Duke of Chattinghamshire's feudal fifedom".
As an example, let's say I went in. They take my DNA.
First iteration: "You have a mother." Well DUH!
Second iteration: "Your mother had a mother." Interesting, I never would have guessed.
47th iteration: "You have a great-(repeat 44 times)-grandmother. Simple math (20 years/gen, 47 gens) tells us she lived 1000 years ago. 'Historical research' tells us this was the Middle Ages. Your neighbor Joe has a 83% chance of having the same ancestor." Can I get my $150 back?
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
(Scene opens with armored mercenary on horseback approaching a stone castle retrofitted out of the decaying hulk of the abandoned steel husk of an office building. Camera pans, giving audience a breathtaking view of the barren, wrecked skyline of a post-apocalyptic American metropolis.)
Guard (steel spear glinting as he shouts): "Halt! Who goes there? Know ye that this place be the realm of the descendents of Bertha the Bountiful. If thou be a son of Agnes the Prolific, begone from here, lest we slay thee!"
Mercenary: "Good soldier! Stay thine blade, for I, too am of the Tribe of Bertha!"
Guard (in stupid, low grunting Superbowl-commercial voice): "Whazzuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup!"
Mercenary pulls a flintlock pistol from his belt, cocks the hammer, and fires at Guard, killing him instantly. Audience cheers.
Guard (lacking the decency to just DIE): "Lo! I am sped! Dead am I! I am made as dust by the treacherous asp! Gone am I from this mortal coil! I am---"
Mercenary: "Why won't you DIE??!"
(Mercenary dismounts, then proceeds to kick Guard till he falls dead, and more importantly, silent. Audience cheers.)
Mercenary: Never underestimate the 1% descended from Jane Doe the Probably-Just-a-Rounding-Error-In-Our-Calculations !
Mercenary proceeds to singlehandedly storm the castle, raping and pillaging, stealing treasure, weapons, and office supplies.
Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.
Don't forget, as late as 1900 more than 3/4 of the American population were rural farmers or otherwise agrarian.(IIRC) Most of us can probably trace our roots to farmers and we probably don't have to go back very many generations before this is true. The farthest I can trace my last name unbroken is to Iowa, 1837. If I don't take the strict last name route I can go back to the early 1700s when the Scotch-Irish emigrated en masse from Northern Ireland to the states. Thus, I know that my ancestors were all farmers, they were likely farmers in Ireland and Scotland before that. I know they were at least literate when they came to America, but I have no knowledge of my family before that. Seeing as how for many, many generations most of the human population was agrarian, passed knowledge orally, and did not keep records, I don't see how this study is going to help people "trace" their ancestry.
I realize that that was not the only purpose of the study BTW, and that they likely made many worthwhile discoveries.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
Good luck with finals then!
I like your sense of humor
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
One: The real OOG actually posts good, insightful comments. He delivers them in a singularly annoying way because it's his way of protesting moderation. But it actually works wuite well (take it from the buy who swapped personalities with him on April Fool's; it's actually fun). But this one really was just a troll, not like OOG at all. (And yes, I am an OOG fan).
Two: OOG uses spaces in his name, not underscores. That one's actually probably more definitive evidence that this was an OOG-poser.
first of all the bbc link shoud point to: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_7 19000/719376.stm According to BBC story all 7 women decended from one of three clans that still exist in Africa today. I assume the other 1% of homo sapians would have decended from the other two clans. Wouldn't it be cool if we could trace combine this with historical and archeological records as well as some new genttic research to create a family tree of the entire human race. We could set it up a server with a CVS like service that people could login to and submit their familt trees. Historians an scientists could be responsible for putting it all together and tracking our ancient ancestors. The information could be put on the internet giving people that are still alive a serial number to protect their privacy. Maybe Slashdot could even set uo a page when you put in you serial number and it tells you how close of a releative you are to linus, Gates, John Katz, etc
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
The science is fairly well established. But what good is? If I'm of European descent, according to this I know that I must almost certainly be related to one of Syke's 7 "matriclans." But since I am of Europeam descent then I already can take this as known, why do I need a "test?" Anyway at a 150,000 years ago, I'm pretty sure this has droped out of my family's oral traditions by now. As to my more recent geneaology, unless someone has tested my (purported) ancestors, after the test I will know no more about my genealogy than I do now. At the risk of seeming like a conspirologist, this test seems to do two things. 1) get the .com some revenue, which may or may not turn into money for the backers. And 2) add "voluntarily" to the DNA data base of whoever's lab this stuff ends up in. The best part is I get to pay for it and never know what's really behind this!
However, it won't be that useful to geneaologists in the long run. The reason: a sad fact of European society (and most others, actually, dating back for most of recorded history): the family name and identity was generally handed down in a patrilineal manner, while mitochondria can only trace matrilineal ancestry. I guess it's sorta understandable, though; back when those rules were made the people didn't know about mitochondrial DNA (or, for that matter, any other kind of DNA).
Furthermore, mitochondrial DNA tracing is far less specific, since barring mutations mitochondrial DNA is identical from generation to generation. In other words, you're not going to get accurate family lineage tracing this way. You can get into the general ballpark (tracing back to one of seven women 150,000 years ago, for example) but you can't be very exact.
I guess it would have important symbolic value, however, particularly among warring nations. It proves that, in a way, we're all brothers (and sisters too, of course). Now if only we could get a few certain groups in the world, who shall remain nameless, to get that through their skulls...
Now if you bothered to read this article you'd see that it said:
Therefore this supports the theory that homosapians come out of Africa.
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
This strikes me much differently than what seems to be indicated by most of the posts here already.
This awes me. That we've actually scientifically confirmed that one little tribe (or the roots of 7 little tribes) managed to fight their way though what passed for life for them, and the end result has been a large chunk of modern civilization.
For some reason it takes something like this to make me feel the wonder of something that could have been logically surmised and proposed beforehand.
I mean, logically you know that if our civilization manages to survive, it implies that:
But when is the last time something made your mouth drop open and think seriously and deeply about things like the above? When is the last time something happened and made it feel real?
I hope I've adequately expressed how this story makes me feel :)
Now, perhaps some of the more Christian oriented members of the Slashdot community could fill in the details here, but weren't there like 13 tribes at Babel? Or was it 9? or 7? I can't remember. I have always been of the belief that things were not quite as literal in the Bible as some would have you believe. Perhaps this is a sort of reference to that...Not trying to start a religious war, but something to think about.
;)
Of course, my mother always believed that the [13|9|7] tribes at Babel were us and the aliens that populate the universe...and the sundering by language was more of a sundering from earth itself...who knows
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
Hmm. I try to get by without judgement. I mean, if I don't have the time or energy to deal with an article, I just won't read it.
I'm saying we aren't really peers of Katz because we don't write anything of substance for the front page of Slashdot. Thus my previous point; if we were really his peers, we would be walking in his shoes and living in his space. Since we aren't everything we see and say is clouded by the fact that we are, essentially, outsiders looking in. If you really don't want to be his peer, that's your choice, not mine. I can call you anything I want, real, imaginary, fictional, or otherwise, and that's just my delusion and reality.
So judge him, as long as you're comfortable with the fact that other people will judge you similarly. I prefer to not judge, if possible, on the grounds that I don't want to be judged either. Because, in all the world, in all the situations and contexts, sometime, someplace, you too will be an idiot, annoying as hell, etc... and someone just like you will be saying that about you. It would bother me if someone were to believe things like that about me... so I avoid believing that of others.
Now what would happen if Katz had another identity, and it happened to be OOG? Or some other of the trolls? It could happen ^^
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
I know such things are controversial, but I think the most commonly accepted view is that Europe was inhabited by Neanderthals 150K years ago, and that the Nanderthals contributed little or nothing to the modern blood lines.
So if those seven women were of the "modern" type at that remote period, then they must have lived in Africa, or barely possibly the Near East. In which cases you should be able to trace a lot more people than just Europeans to them.
--
"Damn! And just when Piranha was starting to turn the tide of negative PR!"
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> The science is fairly well established.
Actually, my latent Luddite tendencies make me somewhat skeptical of the science involved here.
The problem is, once you provide a tree-producing algorithm, it is going to output some tree, no matter what the input is. The validity of the tree depends as much on the input as it does on the algorithm.
To take a geek-oriented analogy, consider a simulated neural network. Given a network, it produces some output regardless of what input you give it. It can be out of bandwidth for what the network is supposed to categorize. It could even be an array of random numbers. It doesn't matter; the network is going to produce an output anyway.
So with DNA categorizing algorithms, at least according to the skeptical hemisphere of my brain. Maybe it gives you seven matriarchs; maybe thirteen; maybe only one. But it will give you something, no matter what the input was.
--
"Damn! And just when Piranha was starting to turn the tide of negative PR!"
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The reason they were going the study at BYU is the Mormon geneology records have been kept for the past hundred and some years. The combonation of written geneologies and genetic geneologies would really help in figuring out certain aspects of a person's genes.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I think it would be really interesting to see how the decendants of the different women are distributed. Are they evenly spread out, are they more or less partitioned off from each other (pretty unlikely), or are just identifiable centers which might suggest where these women lived?
Does anyone know anything about this? Or geographic distributions of the three clans of Africa? Also, does anyone know how much more specific this could get? What would the time limit be? Is it always going to be 100k+, or might it eventually get down to like 25k?
you'll have to pardon my wording. not all of us can be as *precise* as yourself. Pardon me - *human* life began in Africa. (read: Lucy, Austrelopithicus, Homo erectus, etc.)
actually, no. Life began about 3.5-4 billion years ago.
ummm - so you actually know when life began in the Universe? holy shit! have you been on Charlie Rose??? let's not get into semantics here, pud! - you're Jeff K. aren't you??
FluX
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Gattaca, the name was taken from the initials used for the base pairs of DNA.
The problem with the hypothesized Gattacan universe is that just because you have a gene doesn't mean it'll be expressed. For example, I have celiac disease, which is genetic. Of the studies done, one involved identical twins, where it was found that where one twin expressed the disease, there was a 70% chance the other did.
Another study (I've been looking for it again) was on Type I diabetes. Basically, the study demonstrated that if one a) had the gene, b) was given cow's milk prior to 9 months of age, and c) had the third bout of influenza prior to puberty, the gene would be expressed.
Thus, I believe we'll develop rulesets, given a person's genes, of how NOT to express undesirable traits.
Thus, I see the future not in eugenics (as Gattaca would have us believe) but rather in providing information on working around genetic issues. To me, that is a far more plausible (and pleasant, if somewhat regimented) future.
_Deirdre
While you're probably right, you'd never know from this, since it only traces your mother side, and you can only have one linear list of women in that set.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Do you realize what this means?! 99% of humanity belongs to a single tribe, a tribe with a governmental structure (or whatever structure tribes have) still intact! Man, and you thought Ghengis Kahn's empire was big! Is the name of the tribe given anywhere? I'd like to pay respects to my chief, and i'm sure he'd love to know just how widespread and powerful his tribe really is. And i pity the fools in the other two tribes if they try to start any wars with them, i mean, us! We are an army 5,400,000,000 strong and growing! YES!
Um, obviously theoretical growth rates only apply in perfect conditions. Remember the bacteria they always talk about in middle-school math classes whose population doubles every 2 hours or whatever? Well, obviously that isn't a sustainable rate, otherwise the world would have been over run with them billions of times over by now.
Clearly it's the same with people. If you were to say that there were only 2 people around 150,000 years ago, your figure of 1.8*10^66 would be only reduced to a seventh, so there would still be 'a lot of people'.
Of course its still wrong anyway, the formula for population growth isn't p = p0*r^t, its something more like p = p0*e^rt, or something like that (something with an 'e' I don't remember exactly)
Also, that number has nothing whatsoever to do with the number of people alive at any particular time, these women could have lived at different times, and probably had peers that were not represented in the European mtDNA pool. (It has nothing to do with the fathers ether)
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
But what about the remaining 1%? Why isn't there an eighth woman? And what about incest?
The last single % probably comes from several diffrent women, or something. And as far as incest, you wouldn't notice any, since this only traces mitocondrial DNA, witch you only get from your mother. I don't know of any one who was developed in the wombs of two diffrent people
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Greg Egan wrote a thoughtful short story based on mitochondrial DNA profiling called 'Mitochondrial Eve.' It was included in the Luminous anthology. While the technology for this type of analysis is not necessarily brand-new, it will be interesting to see if, now that mitochondrial genotyping is generally available, it will take any permanent root in people's imaginations or lives.
So, then, what about you, yokel, would you marry your cousine
Hrm... I do really like Maruchan Ramen Noodels, witch is about the only thing I can make...
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I hadn't heard about this. However, there's a rather large problem with using it to track descent. Only men have Y-chromosomes (even individuals with Kleinfelter syndrome, in which case they have two X's and a Y, come out male).
So while you could use the Y-chromosome technique to track patrilinear descent of men, the technique is rather useless for women. And even if it could be used to track women, it has all the same problems that mitochondrial tracking does (namely, since it's basically identical from generation to generation, you still can't get specific with it).
There is one possible interesting use for this, though: it could be used to determine how many men were in this tribe with the seven women, and furthermore it could be used to track which men and which women mated. Just think of the fun the tabloids could have with that one: "Prehistoric sex scandal! OOG seen with mysterious "eighth woman!"
Well its obvious that the chief is OOG.
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
It would be more accurate to say that the modern Negro, and all other human "races" are descendants of Africans from 150,000 (or whatever the correct number is) years ago.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
The Oxford Ancestors Matriline service relies on mitochondrial DNA which doesn't mutate often enough to provide the fine matrilineal distinctions that would be required for different matrilines that have a common matrilineal ancestress as recently as the Pictish clans probably do. However, it is interesting that the legend of the Pictish clans sets their number at 7 -- which is the same number of matrilines Sykes says constitutes 99% of the indigenous Europeans.
Seastead this.
Well, it was once thought that the Leakeys merely discovered the origins of life in Africa. But, the shocking truth is that they were the cause of it! There was an accident with a contraceptive and a time machine, you see...
Leakies indeed...
...that the British Royal Family is more inbred than previously thought.
-AP
This reminds me a lot of Greg Egan's short story "Mitochondrial Eve" .. Basically, a religion springs up around tracing ancestry via the mitochondria.. Eventually, of course, the men trace their ancestry via the Y chromosome. Then there is a lot of large scale fighting between the people, because humans are still nasty to each other .. they've just decided on new borders of right and wrong.
Sigh.
---
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
For an interesting look at what sort of dramas this sort of thing can create, check out Greg Egan's short story "Mitochondrial Eve". It's in his collection "Luminous".
Oh and while you're there read the rest of his stories, fantastic hard sci-fi. If you want to try before you buy, he's got a free novella on his web site: http://www.netspace.net.au/~gregegan/
"Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge, and where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"-T.S.Eliot
Why doesn't /. pick up that URL?
-- Peter
Basic points
These "seven mothers" were not the only female ancestors of modern Europeans: rather, they were the only ones whose descent can be traced in unbroken female to female line to modern Europeans.
Most other women alive in Europe at that time contributed their genes - but not through unbroken female-to-female descent. We get nuclear DNA from them, but not mtDNA.
It's the same for the "African Eve". She wasn't the only female ancestor of humanity: most other women alive at that time were our ancestors. She just happens to be the one (and there has to be one) who is our ancestor along the direct female-to-female line.
mtDNA studies can indeed tell us a lot about human history. For example, it shows that the natives of Europe and Asia come from one immensely succesful "branch" of an African "tree", - a smallish group that left Africa to take over the rest of the world - and are more closely related to each other than they are to modern Africans, or than one group of modern Africans is to other groups.
This sort of knowledge must be distinguished from the pseudoscience this bunch are peddling.
Peddling with, I believe, financial reward in mind.
Unless all the five (or four) moderations happen within a few seconds of each other (not bloody likely), then each subsequent moderation means more than the last one. I've often read a post marked at three and thought, that was funny, just about a '3' funny, and left it at three, while I placed a moderator point on some other not-as-funny joke that was currenlty ranked at 1 that I thought should have been ranked at a 2.
So a mod from 4-5 is actually very very impressive, worth much more than just a mod point.
Micah
It's nice to know that we have decended from one of the top 7 sluts in history!
you'll probably admit that life pretty much began in and about africa/fertile crescent. thusly - YES! we are all indeed African-American (or black as i like to say) in heritage.
Erm. I will assume you meant humanity. First off, the Fertile Crescent is one place they trace the beginning of civilization to. IANAAnthropologist/Archeologist but I believe the people in the Fertile Crescent originated in Africa.
You're also missing another big hub of human development and civilization: China. They account for a large part of Asia's population as well as North and South America's first peoples.
Sorry, we're not all black in heritage. Just the Caucasians and Semites among us. And there's an exception to that. The Turks are included in the Caucasian category, but are Altaic in origin. That aside, I'd be curious to see whether any European ancestry would show up in my bloodlines at all.
Droit devant soi on ne peut pas aller bien loin...
Droit devant soi on ne peut pas aller bien loin...
Straight ahead of him, nobody can go very far... -- Le P
wouldn't the decendants of these Original 7 women interact somewhere down the timeline and their children would interact with each other as would theirs etc etc to a point where every european can be traced to *all* 7 of the women... ??
Mixed population bacterial genetics may be a far better anology than eukayotic (nuclear) genetics for explaining the distribution and prevalence of mitochondrial populations
First, some much simplified background (I have a degree in molecular biology): Mitochondria are self-reproducing organelles (= cell 'organs') that many people believe were once independent organisms that entered into a symbiotic relationship with a host cell, and eventually became utterly dependent on the cell. They now function as the primary site for the production of ATP, the main cellular fuel. There may be hundreds or thousands in a single cell
Mitochondria reproduce (to some degree) independently of the cell, and contain their own DNA. The DNA for everything else is in the nucleus (the cell's brain) but the mitochondria 'live' and reproduce in cytoplasm (cell body). When we breed, the nuclear DNA does the whole dance of meiosis/mitosis we learned in school, but the mitochondria fission like bacteria. Most (if not all) of the mitochondria is from the mother because a) the egg has thousands of times as much cytoplasm as the sperm; and b) after first contact with the egg, the sperm's mitochondria go into hyperdrive ("the acrosome reaction") and burn themselves out.
Now for the Original Contributions
1. In the billions of years of symbiosis since the development of eukaryotes, many genes that are useful or essential to the mitochondria have 'migrated' into the nucleus.
2. Though the mitchondrial 'support' genes are fairly cosistent from person to person, they aren't identical in everyone. Those genes only got to the nucleus by accident (mutation, adaptation by mitochondria to the available cell resources, etc) and therefore not all strains may be able to live in all people, or certain strains may enjoy a competititve advantage in a given person
3. Some individuals are known to have multiple strains of mitochondria, due to the various flukes and accidents of biological history. I know of no study that states that *most* humans have only one strain, and doubt its the case. It's actually a good idea to have multiple strains, since anything that kills (or impedes the reproduction of) a solo strain would kill (or prevent the reproduction of) its host. Multistrain individuals should be slightly hardier.
4. Mitochondria became part of the cell when we were single celled organisms. The mitochondrial DNA variation we measure is presumed to be 'nonessential' because mitochondria have very little DNA, and most of it was largely fixed long ago. We presume we're sorting mitochondria by 'eye color', but we may not be.
4) Mitochondria must adapt to their host as the host changes. A cow's mitochondria is much less similar to ours than you'd expect, considering that cows and men didn't diverge very long ago on a mitchondrial timescale.
5) Suppose a type mitochondria in a remote tribe requires the (nucleus) gene PII'ase. This is fine if the tribe all carries the (nuclear) gene for PII'ase. However, this mitochondrial line may die out when interbred because outside populations may not carry the gene PII'ase.
6) I can think of a dozen other mechanisms, but let's not go overboard.
Conclusion:
Mitochondria are subject to many of the evolutionary and selection pressures as independent bacteria, symbiotes, etc. the finding that there are seven major strains of mitochondria in modern man simply suggests that seven mitochondrial strains are widespread and well-adapted to the core genome of humans
It doesn't mean there were only seven 'original women'
It may mean that there were only seven (mitochondrially) *undemanding* women [ducks!] and the truth may be far more complicated. (lesser strains may coexist with the support of the major strains, etc.) and probably are.
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
What do they do with your DNA data afterward? Put in a database with your name, address, buying and web, surfing habits...
Wow, the FBI would pay lots of money for that info. They've always wanted a national DNA database.
I haven't read besides what was posted on slashdot and other comments, but from what's been said, it can only be traced back through female lineage (supposedly because of the mitochondria's DNA being inherited from the mother only, not the father).. if you can only inherit it from the mother, there's no way for them to intermix. Through a purely female lineage, you can be traced back to one of them. However, the fathers along the way could come from anywhere, so you are technically ancestors of probably all 7.. and maybe more.. but we can't trace that.
But this is the first time the 'all Europeans descend from 7 women 180,000 years ago' aspect was pointed out. ( Not that I'm advocating dups per se, perhaps this story could have simply pointed out this aspect of the previous... )