GENEALOGY-DNA-L Archives

From: David Faux <>
Subject: MtDNA , Ethnic Ancestry, and the Future
Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2005 08:53:47 -0700 (PDT)

List:

Now that my daughter and Korean son in law are about to present me with my first grandaughter, it has made me think more about mtDNA lineages.

At the turn of the 20th Century my daughter's maternal line great grandmother came to Canada from Perth, Scotland. She had two daughters, who in turn each had one daughter who married and had children. What is interesting is that my daughter (English - Canadian) and her second cousin (Hispanic - American) are the only ones to carry on the great grandmother's mtDNA heritage. What was once entirely Scottish (the mtDNA) has been largely disconnected from its autosomal context and depends for its survival on those females whose heritage is largely Hispanic or Korean. The mtDNA of my grandaughter will likely merge seamlessly into the Korean tapestry and 500 years from now someone in Busan will be wondering how they could have European mtDNA with a haplotype that is concentrated in the region around Perth and Dundee Scotland (by then whole molecule mtDNA testing will probably provide this specificity). Perhaps someone will tell them it is just an "erratic", or possibly Europea!
n mtDNA
will become relatively common in Korea.

Just in a pensive mood I guess, but it strikes me how quickly the world DNA mosaic is changing - the NGS is certainly on the right track in their efforts to profile the patterns of the present to give us a baseline for comparison in the future.

David Faux.

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• MtDNA , Ethnic Ancestry, and the Future by David Faux <>