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Archiver > GENEALOGY-DNA > 2007-05 > 1179411596
From: "ljcrain2" <>
Subject: Re: [DNA] New DNA Tests done on the Hemings-JeffersonControversy[K2]
Date: Thu, 17 May 2007 09:19:56 -0500
References: <c93.dbfb152.337c6206@aol.com><009a01c79835$2d32c8a0$650fa8c0@Villandra2>
Dora; Spencer Wells stated the defining SNP marker for K2 in the article I sent a link to last night.
"SNP testing, however, revealed that Jefferson's Y is positive for M70, which places him in haplogroup K2."
Also in your last post you were discussing mtDNA. K2 is a Y haplogroup.
Janet Crain
http://phoenicia.org/jefferson.html
<Quote>
Spencer Wells, the geneticist that heads the Genographic Project in search of the scientific "Adam" and the National Geographic study "Who were the Phoenicians," revealed that Thomas Jefferson, one of the "founding fathers" of the United States belonged to Y-chromosome haplogroup K2. The quote from Wells that follows is the scientific explanation of what was discovered in studying Jefferson's DNA.
"As part of our genetic analyses for the film Search for Adam, we analyzed additional markers on Jefferson's Y-chromosome in an effort to determine why it is so unusual. If you recall the original Hemmings paper in Nature by Foster et al., the haplotype was 'rare', which is what enabled them to implicate Jefferson as the source rather than another European. At the time there were no matches among the 607 European men (Jefferson's father claimed Welsh ancestry) who had been genotyped for the same 11 microsatellites. Recent searches of more comprehensive databases have turned up related haplotypes belonging to haplogroups O, K and Q. We investigated the 12 microsatellites routinely typed by FTDNA, which did not add to the haplogroup resolution. SNP testing, however, revealed that Jefferson's Y is positive for M70, which places him in haplogroup K2. K2 is rare in northern Europe (only one K was found among 1772 British men surveyed by Capelli et al., but it wasn't typed for M70) but quite common in the Middle East and northeast Africa, where it reaches frequencies of 10% or more...We are currently looking at potential source populations for Jefferson's K2 as part of a broader survey of Y-chromosome variation in the Middle East and North Africa, and expect to submit a publication by the end of the year. I'm sure that all of you will appreciate the amount of effort that has gone into launching The Genographic Project, and hope that you will understand that our publication schedule has been somewhat delayed as a result.
Spencer Wells
Mission Programs
<End Quote>
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dora Smith" <>
To: <>
Sent: Wednesday, May 16, 2007 10:40 PM
Subject: Re: [DNA] New DNA Tests done on the Hemings-JeffersonControversy[K2]
> Anne, the article at http://isogg.org/tree/ISOGG_HapgrpK07.html doesn't
> discuss the STR markers for K2, which is what one really needs to know to
> search Y Search for K2 - unless one can search for K2 and I don't know it.
> But I've an idea that the printout of Haplogroup K from Y Search that I have
> in my notebook contains lots of K2 but I can't pick them out and count them
> because I don't know the - whoops - mtDNA mutations - that distinguish
> haplogroup K2.
>
> (You can tell I haven't looked at DNA much in the past couple of weeks.
> I've been working among other things on how to cure menopause, and if anyone
> knows that, please write me privately.)
>
> Yours,
> Dora Smith
> Austin, TX
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <>
> To: <>
> Sent: Wednesday, May 16, 2007 8:32 AM
> Subject: Re: [DNA] New DNA Tests done on the
> Hemings-JeffersonControversy[K2]
>
>
>> In a message dated 5/16/2007 2:55:34 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
>> writes:
>>
>>> Spencer Wells says in his book, "Deep Ancestry", on page 42:
>>> ---
>>> A marker known as M9 was positive, but it didn't tell us very much since
>>> M9
>>> is found in populations from around the world--from Portugal to
>>> Melanesia,
>>> to Argentina. We widened our search and eventually found that he also
>>> had a
>>> marker known as M70.
>>>
>>> The positive M70 result, which placed him in a haplogroup clan known as
>>> K2,
>>> indicated that Odine--and therefore Thomas Jefferson--both shared a Y
>>> chromosome that is extremely unusual in Europe. At the time of the
>>> original
>>> Jefferson-Hemings study in 1998, before most of the markers we use today
>>> had
>>> been discovered, no chromosome like it had ever been seen anywhere in the
>>> world. Its uniqueness had allowed scientists to link the Jefferson and
>>> Heming descendants in the first place.
>>> ---
>>>
>>> These paragraphs certainly give the impression that M70, and hence
>>> haplogroup K2, was first discovered in a Jefferson descendant.
>>
>> No, you're reading too much into it. The STR haplotype all by itself was
>> unique, and Wells only means that M70 was discovered after the 1998 study.
>> Since
>> that study failed to give a positive identifcation of a haplogroup, there
>> was a
>> motivation to "widen the search" and test more markers. If you're
>> interested
>> in tracking the history of the M70 marker, the ISOGG tree would be a good
>> place to start.
>>
>> http://isogg.org/tree/ISOGG_YDNA_SNP_Index07.html
>>
>> Ann Turner
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> **************************************
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>>
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>
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