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From: "Alfred A. Aburto Jr." <>
Subject: Re: [DNA] Malaspina et al (2001)'s Cohens -- an answer ?
Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 14:06:23 -0700
References: <461F9F20.9010003@comcast.net> <46223AAE.1020802@ucl.ac.uk>
In-Reply-To: <46223AAE.1020802@ucl.ac.uk>


> James Heald wrote:

>Looks like I've been missing all the fun over the last few days!
>
>[AAA: snip,snip]
>
>
>Of course, I suppose we don't know for sure what other mini-clusters of
>Cohens there might be in J2a1, that just statistically haven't yet shown
>up in what little data there is that is openly publicly accessible.
>
>

Yes, it's been a riot :-), and it has been instructive too.

I want to add that all the early studies of the Y-DNA of the Cohanim
(Jewish Priests) found the Cohanim spread across various haplogroups.
Recently (last several years for me) we are learning that, despite a
lack of a definitive published study of the Y-DNA of the Cohanim, that
the _main_ group of Cohanim appears to be in J1 (as a cluster called the
CMH-12 which also contains the earliar CMH-6 cluster). This is based
upon public and personal information and observations provided by
various people such as Bonnie, Ellen, and others. For now I accept that,
but I am still waiting for someone to publish that "final" and
definitive study of the Y-DNA of the Cohanim. That may never happen of
course. So our fun may never end ...

But one thing is clear from the early studies of the Y-DNA of the
Cohanim, and that is that they occupy various haplogroups. They are not
just in J1 or even in J, or even in IJ. For example, look at the Hammer
et al (1997) study published in Nature. Hammer used YAP and the DYS19
marker to get the first bearings on the Cohanim Y-DNA. He found that
Cohanim were primarily in the UEP group (haplogroup if you will) defined
by YAP- (that is, those Y-DNA's that did _not_ have the "Y Alu
Polymorphic" insert). Now YAP is the SNP known as M1, see:
http://isogg.org/tree/ISOGG_YDNATreeTrunk07.html . YAP (M1) defines the
haplogroup known as DE. Now YAP- means "not DE". So Hammer's findings
were that the Cohanim were _not_ in haplogroup DE (which includes
haplogroups D & E). In current terminology YAP- means that the Cohanim
were to be found in either Y-DNA haplogroups C or F (where F contains
haplogroups G, H, IJ, and K). That was the Cohanim Y-DNA state of
knowledge as published in 1997 (they were in haplogroups C or F). Hammer
et al (1997) went even further though because they determined that the
Cohanim were also defined by the Y-STR marker DYS19. Hammer did not
define repeat counts for DYS19 but gave them letter counts DYS19A-E (I
don't know exactly what these mean, so if anyone knows please respond!).
It turned out that 54.4% of the Cohanim had values of DYS19B which I
presume means DYS19=14 and 44.1% had other values(!!). So, according to
Hammer et al (1997) 44.1% of the Cohanim did _not_ have DYS19=14 and
therefore were at _least_ one point removed from what we now call the
CMH-6 or CMH-12. Finally, Hammer also found that 1.5% or the Cohanim
were YAP+ which means these Cohanim belonged to haplogroup either D or E.

There were other refinements of the Cohanim Y-DNA structure that were
published 18 months later by Thomas et al (1998), also published in
Nature. However, I haven't figured out Y-DNA structure yet in terms of
the current Y-DNA Tree. If any has please respond too.
Al



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