DNA For Everyone

[sneezypb]

Originally posted to DNA for Everyone.

So, 60 Minutes has broadcast a report on the tracing of DNA. Leslie made a statement, "The are just two bits of DNA which remain pure. The Y chromosome which passes directly from father to son. And something called mitochondrial DNA which passes unchanged from mother to child." Logically speaking, if the mDNA

Comments

[pkeck]

Yeah, they can find out all kinds of cool things from the "DNA clock"- observing rates of mutation of things that don't change all that much between generations

[sneezypb]

Something happened to my original reply. (Probably I closed the browser without actually sending it.)

Wells pointed out dating markers really is assuming a certain number will happen at an average rate over time. Technically, I don't think these markers are genes. Genes are coherent sequences that cause things to happen. These are aberrations between coherent sequences which have no value biologically. Except now.... In mDNA and in the Y chromosome, we can catalog these mistakes and locate individuals with them in common as having shared ancestry.

Something to remember about South American Indians is the Spanish were in sexual contact with them for almost 200 years starting about 500 years ago. Part of the Diaspora was in Spain before, during, and after this period. By the same token, sub-Saharan African could have Moorish ancestors who mixed with the Spanish Diaspora. So, it seems reasonable to me this individual could have ancestors all over the place.

Oh... there is a book, Abraham’s Children: Race, Identity and the DNA of the

[sneezypb]

Something interesting:
Dr Oliver Curry seems to think that geographical and social mobility is a new thing, and that this will produce uniformly coffee coloured humans in 1,000 years. Oliver has perhaps not been to Brazil, where black African, white European, and Amerindian have lived side by side and bred together for many centuries. The Brazilians have not gone coffee coloured, they in fact still show a wide range of skin pigmentation, from black to tan. This is because skin pigmentation seems to be coded for by a fairly small number of genes and probably doesn’t blend and even out as Oliver - a political theorist, not a scientist - suggests.
http://www.badscience.net/?p=316
Why is it you have to be a scientist to understand science?

[sneezypb]

Forgot about this: http://sneezypb.livejournal.com/225223.html