cloudy
Alabama Slammer
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2004
- Posts
- 37,997
Last week, I watched an absorbing segment on the History Channel about the Lemba of South Africa who claim to be one of the lost tribes of Israel. Through DNA testing, it was found that they do, indeed, share the Cohan gene marker - that of the high priests of Judea.
I know that some groups are worried about the new trend in DNA testing, saying that it may be another way for some to stereotype racial characteristics, and I agree, it's a convoluted issue, but the science is still fascinating.
Then, I ran across this absolutely fascinating article here (excerpted below).
Wayne Joseph grew up a black American in Louisiana and Los Angeles—even writing a My Turn for NEWSWEEK in 1994 about Black History Month. He heard about DNA testing several years ago and, seeking details about his mixed ancestry, sent away for a kit. "I figured I'd come back about 70 percent African and 30 percent something else," he says.
When the results arrived in the mail "I was floored," he says. The testing company said he was 57 percent Indo-European, 39 percent Native American, 4 percent East Asian. No African blood at all.
For almost a year, Joseph searched his soul, sifting in his mind the decisions he'd made based on his identity as a black man: his first marriage, his choice of high school, his interest in African-American literature. Before the test, "I was unequivocally black," he says. "Now I'm a metaphor for America." And not just for America, but for all of us.
And then there's Prof. Henry Louis (Skip) Gates Jr., head of Harvard University's African-American Studies department. Gates always knew he wasn't 100 percent African-American. According to family legend, Gates's only white ancestor was a slave owner named Samuel Brady, who had sex with Gates's great-great-grandmother Jane on his farm in Maryland in the 1800s.
But recent DNA analyses turned Gates's world upside down. There was no trace of Brady on Gates's genome. Further testing revealed that Gates, in fact, carries as much Western European blood as he does African—and that one of his white ancestors was probably an Irish servant who met Gates's sixth or seventh great-grandfather sometime before 1700. "I'm thinking I'm a Brady and maybe I'm from Nigeria, and here I am descended from some white woman," says Gates. "It's incredible."
DNA can now link regular people to high-profile ancestors—from Genghis Khan to the Iceman to the Irish warlord Niall of the Nine Hostages. Genghis-as-Great-Grandpa might be cool cocktail chatter, but since we don't have his DNA, proving direct descent is virtually impossible.
Testing family roots through the Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA has serious limitations, too: it tells you only about your direct paternal or maternal lineage, not the ancestor footprints hidden in the rest of your genome. Go back 10 generations, and that's 1,024 ancestors, says Stanford bioethicist Hank Greely. "Your Y might be from Japan, your mitochondrial DNA from Mexico and all other 1,022 ancestors from Sweden."
Greely worries that customers may not fully understand what they're getting. One company, DNAPrint Genomics, does test markers outside of the Y and mitochondrial DNA, then maps them to four regions of the world (West Africa, Europe, East Asia and the Americas)—that's where Gates got his 50/50 ancestry. But the percentages are only estimates, not certainties.
I know that some groups are worried about the new trend in DNA testing, saying that it may be another way for some to stereotype racial characteristics, and I agree, it's a convoluted issue, but the science is still fascinating.
Then, I ran across this absolutely fascinating article here (excerpted below).
Wayne Joseph grew up a black American in Louisiana and Los Angeles—even writing a My Turn for NEWSWEEK in 1994 about Black History Month. He heard about DNA testing several years ago and, seeking details about his mixed ancestry, sent away for a kit. "I figured I'd come back about 70 percent African and 30 percent something else," he says.
When the results arrived in the mail "I was floored," he says. The testing company said he was 57 percent Indo-European, 39 percent Native American, 4 percent East Asian. No African blood at all.
For almost a year, Joseph searched his soul, sifting in his mind the decisions he'd made based on his identity as a black man: his first marriage, his choice of high school, his interest in African-American literature. Before the test, "I was unequivocally black," he says. "Now I'm a metaphor for America." And not just for America, but for all of us.
And then there's Prof. Henry Louis (Skip) Gates Jr., head of Harvard University's African-American Studies department. Gates always knew he wasn't 100 percent African-American. According to family legend, Gates's only white ancestor was a slave owner named Samuel Brady, who had sex with Gates's great-great-grandmother Jane on his farm in Maryland in the 1800s.
But recent DNA analyses turned Gates's world upside down. There was no trace of Brady on Gates's genome. Further testing revealed that Gates, in fact, carries as much Western European blood as he does African—and that one of his white ancestors was probably an Irish servant who met Gates's sixth or seventh great-grandfather sometime before 1700. "I'm thinking I'm a Brady and maybe I'm from Nigeria, and here I am descended from some white woman," says Gates. "It's incredible."
DNA can now link regular people to high-profile ancestors—from Genghis Khan to the Iceman to the Irish warlord Niall of the Nine Hostages. Genghis-as-Great-Grandpa might be cool cocktail chatter, but since we don't have his DNA, proving direct descent is virtually impossible.
Testing family roots through the Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA has serious limitations, too: it tells you only about your direct paternal or maternal lineage, not the ancestor footprints hidden in the rest of your genome. Go back 10 generations, and that's 1,024 ancestors, says Stanford bioethicist Hank Greely. "Your Y might be from Japan, your mitochondrial DNA from Mexico and all other 1,022 ancestors from Sweden."
Greely worries that customers may not fully understand what they're getting. One company, DNAPrint Genomics, does test markers outside of the Y and mitochondrial DNA, then maps them to four regions of the world (West Africa, Europe, East Asia and the Americas)—that's where Gates got his 50/50 ancestry. But the percentages are only estimates, not certainties.
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I have the same thing.
