Friday, August 04, 2006

Genetic Genealogy Article: 6.0

As you may or may not be aware, I've recently taken to rating articles (on a 1 to 10 scale) on genetic genealogy (which I call genetealogy). Well, here's an interesting one from Scotsman.com that features Bryan Sykes of Seven Daughter of Eve (a great book, by the way) and Oxford Ancestors fame (a person plea to Oxford Ancestors -- please start offering higher resolution tests!).



Overall, it's a fairly innocent article, so I might have given it a higher rating, but this sentence got my attention:

"Both men and women can also choose to have their maternal ancestry traced, using the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) that is passed down in the X-chromosome in an unbroken line through the generations."

Nope. Not true. MtDNA does not get passed down in the X-chromosome. Click here for an explanation. It may not sound like a big deal, but this is the kind of statement that starts rumors. I already received an email from someone who was all excited about the prospect of testing using the X-chromosome (which may be possible, but we ain't there yet!).

Thanks to John Reid of the Anglo-Celtic Connections blog for bringing this to my attention.

posted by Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak @ 10:51 AM

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