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Archiver > GENEALOGY-DNA > 2001-09 > 0999789969


From:
Subject: Re: [DNA] MtDNA Results
Date: Thu, 6 Sep 2001 11:26:09 EDT


In a message dated 09/06/01 4:27:48 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
writes:


> First, by what criteria do geneticists create haplogroups?

My understanding is that it is a mathematical construction, where haplotypes
with similar mutations are clustered together into groups. Take a look at the
table of "motifs" at

http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~macaulay/founder2000/index.html

You will see that 16126C occurs in haplogroups J and T, but additional
mutations seem to cluster together to define J and T more specifically. There
are ambiguities, because parallel mutations can occur in independent groups.


>
> Second, approximately how long ago would two people with matching sequences
> have shared a common maternal ancestor?
>


It could be thousands of years, but I have argued that there's a difference
between looking at two random people versus two selected people where you
have some reason to believe they lived in the same location time frame. I
haven't received any feedback on my scenario -- maybe I should find a
statistics mailing list.

http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/read/GENEALOGY-DNA/2001-08/0998582436

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