Tsimshian (general picture, not the woman in question)
Posted on 07/09/2013 5:36:49 AM PDT by Renfield
Scientists say they have established a genetic link between three North American women, one who died 5,000 years ago, one 2,500 years ago and one living.
The evidence shows the living woman, a Tsimshian from the Metlakatla First Nation in British Columbia, is descended from the women who died centuries ago or from one of their close female relatives, PostMedia News reported. All three had the same mitogenome or mitochondrial DNA, which is passed from mother to child.
The research conducted by Canadian and U.S. scientists was published this week in PLoS ONE, one of the journals produced by the Public Library of Science in the United States.
The scientists also established a genetic link between two skeletons from Alaska and British Columbia, one more than 10,000 years old and the other 6,000 years old.
In that case, they found no living link to the genetic line.
The most famous use of mitochondrial DNA is the recent identification of a man buried in what is now a carpark in Leicester, England, as King Richard III, killed at Bosworth Field in 1485. Scientists matched the king's DNA with a Canadian furniture maker descended in the direct female line from Richard's sister.
But scientists say the British Columbia findings are more startling because they cross 200 generations, while Richard preceded his remote relative by only 17.
"This is the beginning of the golden era for ancient DNA research because we can do so much now that we couldn't do a few years ago because of advances in sequencing technologies," Ripan Malhi, one of the leaders of the study and a professor of genomic biology at the University of Illinois, said in a research summary. "We're just starting to get an idea of the mitogenomic diversity in the Americas, in the living individuals as well as the ancient individuals."
Ping
That seems like the opposite conclusion of the facts in the article. The researchers found the same markers in the DNA over 200 generations. I wouldn't call that diversity -- justthe opposite.
Thank you Renfield, great post!
You might remember the news about the UK teacher, finding a 9000 year old ancestor:
“Cheddar Man”
Pre-historic FReeper?
Canada Ping!
You mean like the more things change the more they stay the same?
Boy this is exciting maybe in a couple of years using the national dna database and these new better more improved sequencing techniques hundreds of thousands of children would know who their daddy is.
Fascinating.
Two very interesting things have come to my attention lately.
The first is that SOMETIMES, but VERY, VERY, VERY RARELY the males sperm contributes mitochondria to the egg. It is usually destroyed almost immediately, but even more rare than it enters, occasionally it survives.
The most interesting thing by far is that they were getting ready to do brain surgery on some gal. She was the mother of three kids, IIRC, two of them daughters.
While typing her genetics before the test, they found some genes that shouldn’t a been there.
They matched the genotype to one of the daughters.
Seems that sometimes during pregnancy, the fetal cells can cross the placenta and get into the mothers bloodstream. The mothers immune system is somewhat tuned down during pregnancy so she doesn’t go into full scale immune rejection of the fetus.
The babies cells then established themselves in the mothers brain and everybody was hunky dory with it!
Amazing!
AFAIK, it’s been confirmed with a couple other cases.
;’)
Cheddar Man has the same DNA as my dad's mother, Mrs Smith.
Cheddar Man
In 1903, skeletal remains were found in a cave in Cheddar, England. The remains of a 23 year-old man, who was killed by a blow to the face, were discovered to be at least 9,000 years old. Ninety-four years after the discovery of "Cheddar Man", scientists were able to extract mitochondrial DNA from his tooth cavity.
Name:
Cheddar Man
Haplotype
U5a 16192T, 16270T
Sounds like a chimera - their bodies contain the DNA of two individuals.
This is caused by two zygotes combining, in the womb, into one and developing as a single foetus. The two zygotes should have been fraternal twins.
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