A research endeavor was formed at Brigham Young University which is called Molecular Genealogy Research Group. If I may joke a bit, the libraries were running out of shelf space. Since each of us carries around a unique marker that tells who we are, all that is needed is to establish the relationships that would explain where we received the components in our DNA. With a master data base, one could bypass this tedious work of scanning church records in foreign languages and simply pop into a laboratory and donate a little blood. The numbers that come back might tell a person that he is 42 percent German, 37 percent English, 5 percent Irish, 1 percent French, 6 percent Swedish, 4 percent Spanish, and 6 percent Native American.
As a start in building a data base, samples are being collected from around the world on a hundred thousand people for 500 groups. (So far I am one of this group but the MGRG will not be telling me anything about the outcome.)
For each group, it is hoped to establish DNA markers which are unique to the group. When this is done, an individual can compare his/her correlations to these groups. That will broadly define their group affiliations. For this purpose, all of the genes can be used.
Normally, the genes that one has are a mixture of genes that are inherited from both the father and mother. The same father and mother may bestow a different mixture on another of their offspring. Thus, not all of the children are alike. There are two types of genes that are special. A male obtains his Y chromosome from his father only and the mother does not contribute anything to this. The mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is passed on only by a mother to all of her children. Her sons, though, do not pass this on. Her daughters do pass on the copy they got from their mother. So mothers and daughters form one line while fathers and sons form another line.
Recently some people claimed they descended from Thomas Jefferson, even though they were not generally recognized as descendants. The Y chromosomes from the claimants, and from proven descendants, were compared. The laboratory results were that the two groups were enough alike to make it probable, at the 95% level, that Thomas was the grandsire of both groups (assuming that the "proven" group was actually descended from Thomas, which was very likely).
The mtDNA studies have led some to postulate that all humans originated in Africa.
If a person compares his DNA to the DNAs of his parents, he should have a high correlation to each of them. This comes about because a person gets about one-half of his DNA from each parent.
(23 Aug 02)
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.