The Genographic Project
Mar 8th, 2008 by Dave
The New York Times recently ran an article on Dan Stoicescu who recently paid a company $350,000 to buy the full sequence of his genetic code, some six billion units of information. The price seems high but it is a lot less than it cost to decode the first human genome originally and should continue to fall rapidly in the next few years. Right now you can get some simple DNA testing done for an affordable price, but you get what you pay for; the results can only give you a few clues to the migratory patterns of one of your ancient ancestors.
National Geographic, in association with IBM, is offers a test for $100 to analyze either your mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) which comes from your mother or your y chromosone which you get from your father (and only have if you are male). Since I already knew quite a bit about my father’s line I chose the mtDNA test. After weeks of processing the results came back that showed me to be in Haplogroup T (subclade T2). Haplogroup T is from Clan Tara of the Bryan Sykes book Seven Daughters of Eve.
Ancestral Line
Eve > L1/L0 > L2 > L3 > N > R > T
Women descended from the R branchy of the tree; lived about 40k years ago.
Haplogroup T has a wide distribution, from the Indus Valley bordering India and Pakistan on the east, south to the Arabian Peninsula,
west throughout eastern and northern Europe; one of the main genetic signatures of the Neolithic expansion.
The Neolithic expansion was when a group of humans living in the Fertile Cresent (eastern Turkey and northern Syria) began farming; and that farming was able to support larger populations with a reliable food source. While the technology of agriculture disseminated quickly; the farmers were less successful at planting their own genetic seeds, and the Neolithic lineages are found at frequencies less than 20% in Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia.
In the modern era, Haplogroup T is pretty rare although it is found in European royalty passed down through Barbara of Celje, wife of the Holy Roman Emperor; and also in this country in the outlaw Jesse James.
It is all interesting history although finding out your mtDNA sequence probably has little relevance to you today if you get a random mix of genes from both parents since if you go back a mere 20 generations or roughly 500 years (20 generations x 25 years) you have over 1 million ancestors (2^20). If however certain genes have an affinity for the X chromosome or the Y chromosome those would be more closely associated with your direct maternal (or paternal ancestor). In the book Genome, there is evidence that some genes or traits are passed down from one side or the other.