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Archiver > GENEALOGY-DNA > 2005-05 > 1117216918


From: (John Chandler)
Subject: Re: [DNA] Middle Eastern ancestral markers on new Euro 1.0 test
Date: Fri, 27 May 2005 14:01:58 -0400 (EDT)
References: <8.693d6d17.2fc8ab7a@aol.com>
In-Reply-To: <8.693d6d17.2fc8ab7a@aol.com> (DNACousins@aol.com)


Ann wrote:
> It would certainly be interesting
> to know what test results for someone with predominantly black or Native
> American ancestry would look like.

Yes, and there is no doubt that the company did those tests to satisfy
their own curiosity -- after all, they tried out the global ethnicity
tests on rodents to demonstrate that crime-scene blood samples
wouldn't give false indications if they accidentally included some
mouse blood. Most, or at least many, of the markers in the global
test are missing in rodents, and so the ethnicity test gives the
result "not human".

> If they succeeded in picking markers which
> mutated after migration into Europe, the "rest of the world" should be largely
> homozygous for the wild allele.

More likely, the markers already existed in both forms and simply
segregated a bit by genetic drift among the various populations in
Europe. In any case, nothing has been said about even *trying* to
pick out markers that are uniquely European. The goal in designing
the test is, and must be, to find the set of markers with the maximum
contrasts in allele frequencies between populations within the
India-to-Europe corridor.

John Chandler

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