GENEALOGY-DNA-L Archives

Archiver > GENEALOGY-DNA > 2003-06 > 1054609419


From: Philip Ritter <>
Subject: RE: [DNA] A mystery, scratching my head
Date: Mon, 02 Jun 2003 20:03:46 -0700
References: < <2806601.1054591367231.JavaMail.nobody@bigbird.psp.pas.earthlink.net>
In-Reply-To: <000501c32967$bfde40d0$6901a8c0@RJEMAIN>


At 08:33 PM 6/2/2003 -0400, wrote:
>In other
>words, you could have 1 European and 1 NA parent and get a child with
>99% European and another with 99% NA. How likely - very unlikely - but
>theoretically possible. (We have geneticists on list who can explain
>this in detail.)

I'm not a geneticist, but I know this is not true. For any markers that
have clearly European/non NA and clearly NA/non-European alleles, the child
with one European parent and one NA parent will get 1 European allele and 1
NA allele. It is the grandparent's genes that can get mixed in any
proportion when the parents create eggs and sperm cells. Thus if you had
two parents who were both half European/half NA (not unlikely in some
tribes), you could theoretically get a 99% European or 99% Native American
children. My daughters are half Japanese and the older one is married to
an Asian. Thus my new granddaughter is 3/4 Asian, but theoretically could
have up to 1/2 European markers (from me) or 100% Asian markers (from my
wife and my granddaughter's father). If my other daughter married a
half-Asian/half European, then the children theoretically could look almost
all Asian or almost all European (but would likely look mixed like my
daughters).

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