GeoGene: Tracking your genetic roots

News

This section will be updated as new stories are added so please check back regularly and let us know of any stories you would like to see reported.

 

The 2007 National History Show in London | 26 June 2007

We hope you enjoyed this show as much as we did!

The show - inspired by the huge popularity of the BBC Television programme 'Who Do You Think You Are?' and incorporating the Society of Genealogists' 'Family History Show' - took place over the May Bank Holiday weekend of 5 - 7 May 2007, at the National Hall in Olympia.

Thousands of people came along to learn more about family and local history, and with such an incredible number and variety of exhibitors, talks and workshops there was certainly plenty to keep everyone happy. For those who interests tended towards military or aviation history there was even an opportunity to sit in the cockpit of a World War II Spitfire! All in all, it was a fantastic few days and we offer our congratulations to everyone involved in organising the show.

But the largest crowds seemed to be in the section devoted to genealogy. We had our own stand there for the full three days and there was enormous interest in GeoGene's use of hi-tech science to find out about your ancient ancestors. If you haven't already let us analyse your DNA to discover your own genetic heritage, why not do so now? To learn more about what's involved, just go to the menu (above, top-left) and click on 'The GeoGene Service'.

 

Aboriginal Australians came 'Out of Africa' | 26 June 2007

A new genetic study has answered questions about the ancestry of Aboriginal Australians. The findings almost certainly confirm the 'Out of Africa' theory of human evolution - that all modern humans share a common ancestry.

Australia's early colonists are believed to have travelled along the South Asian coast, but skeletal and tool remains found along this route have been strikingly different from those discovered in Australia. This has prompted some to argue that the early colonists may have interbred with an already present Homo erectus population, or that they may have been descended from a separate migration from Africa, or that modern humans may have evolved in different places. But the new study indicates that the observed differences resulted from the colonists' relative genetic isolation after their arrival.

The study looked at published and new genetic samples taken from Aboriginal Australians and Melanesians from New Guinea. The researchers analysed the samples for mitochondrial and Y chromosome variation and compared the resulting profiles with information previously built up about the global 'family tree' of Homo sapiens.

The results confirmed that all Australian lineages were descended from the same branches of the family tree that are associated with the 'Out of Africa' exodus. They also showed a genetic closeness between Australian and New Guinean populations, indicating that Australia and New Guinea were colonised at around the same time, which agrees with current archaeological thinking. There was no evidence of interbreeding with Homo erectus.

Dr Toomas Kivisild, one of the report's co-authors, said: 'The evidence points to relative isolation after the initial arrival, which would mean any significant developments in skeletal form and tool use were not influenced by outside sources.

'There was probably a minor secondary gene flow into Australia while the land bridge from New Guinea was still open, but once it was submerged the population was apparently isolated for thousands of years. The differences in the archaeological record are probably the result of this, rather than any secondary migration or interbreeding.'

The research was led by Dr Peter Forster, who said: 'Although it has been speculated that the populations of Australia and New Guinea came from the same ancestors, the fossil record differs so significantly it has been difficult to prove. For the first time, this evidence gives us a genetic link showing that the Australian Aboriginal and New Guinean populations are descended directly from the same specific group of people who emerged from the African migration.'

[The research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 22 May 2007, vol. 104, no. 21, 8726-8730]

 

Did your ancestors live in Jamestown? | 26 June 2007

This year is the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown in Virginia - the first permanent English settlement in North America.

To mark the occasion, the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation (SMGF) is inviting people to search its free online database to discover if they had ancestors in Jamestown.

The Foundation - a non-profit organisation - say that their correlated genetic and genealogy catalogue is the largest in the world, containing more than 4 million records from 172 countries.

Scott Woodward, the Foundation's Executive Director, said: 'To commemorate the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown, we would like to invite everyone who is interested in their ancestry to search our database to learn if they are related to any of those early Jamestown inhabitants.

'We know by reviewing the Register of 17th Century Ancestors provided by The Jamestown Society that more than two-thirds of the family surnames in the register are also in our database. Even better, through a combination of genetics and genealogy, we have multiple direct paternal lines from some of these first settlers, which gives us their exact Y-chromosome genetic profile.'

To learn more, visit the SMGF website.

 

Rootsweb | 26 Junel 2007

The GENEALOGY-DNA website at RootsWeb.com is the principal online discussion site for genetic ancestry research.

This lively site is extremely interesting and highly recommended for anyone wanting to look more deeply into this fascinating subject. Among the many topics discussed in recent weeks have been the following:

This is just a small sample of what has been discussed there recently. To browse all the threads visit the archives.

 

Visit us at the Live National History Show in London | 4th April 2007

This year's Family History Show will take place as part of the 'Who Do You Think You Are?' BBC TV programmes's Live National History Show and GeoGene will be there.

The event takes place on the May Bank Holiday weekend, 5 - 7 May 2007, at the National Hall, Olympia, London. GeoGene is participating on all 3 days and you can find us at Table 99 in the Society of Genealogists area. Do come along to say hello because we would love to meet you!

As well as the chance to visit a wide range of exhibitors, you will have the opportunity to 'Ask the Experts' from the Society of Genealogists, The National Archives and other organisations, and to see famous TV historians such as David Starkey and Dan Snow

Given the huge success of the hit BBC show, this event is certain to prove massively popular and promises to be a fantastic show for anyone interested in family history.

Adult tickets cost cost £18 if bought in advance (£20 on the door) and tickets for children aged 6 - 15 cost £5 in advance (£6 on the door). Children aged 5 and under are admitted free.

The Society of Genealogists is offering the opportunity to buy 2 tickets for £20, a saving of £20 on the full ticket price. For full details, visit the Society of Genealogists website.

 

Headless skeletons clue to Polynesian mystery | 4th April 2007

Scientists in New Zealand are attempting to extract DNA from 70 headless skeletons in a search for clues as to Polynesian origins.

The bones were unearthed in a dig at the oldest known cemetery in the Pacific, the 3,200 to 3,000-year-old Lapita cemetery at Teouma in Vanuatu. The Lapita are held to have been the very first people to colonise Vanuatu, Fiji, New Caledonia, Samoa and Tonga.

Professor Matthew Spriggs, the Australian National University archaeologist who co-directed the dig, hopes that genetic analysis will provide a clearer picture of where the Lapita people originally came from.

'Up until now,' he said, 'people have speculated about the origins of the Polynesians, the origins of the Lapita people, and who were the Lapita people. We've actually got the Lapita people.'

He says the results are likely to support theories that that they migrated here from South East Asia.

According to Professor Spriggs, the lack of skulls suggests that the Lapita exhumed dead bodies to remove the heads after burial. It is likely that this act had religious significance.

[Source: The Australian National University]


Thomas Jefferson's Rare European Lineage | 4th April 2007

A recent genetic study has raised a tantalising possibility: did US President Thomas Jefferson have Jewish ancestry?

Researchers based at the University of Leicester, England, have characterised the Y chromosome carried by Jefferson and discovered that his paternal lineage is through a rare haplogroup known as K2.

This lineage is shared by only around 1% of men worldwide. It is most prevalent in Africa and the Middle East but is also found scattered around Western Europe. Although researchers cannot be certain, some believe that the dispersal of this lineage is best explained by the Jewish Diaspora in which Jews expanded throughout large parts of Europe. It is this that has created excited speculation among both Jewish and Jeffersonian communities in the US.

The report, titled 'Thomas Jefferson's Y chromosome belongs to a rare European lineage' was published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

[Report: Jobling, MA et al, Thomas Jefferson's Y chromosome belongs to a rare European lineage, Am J Phys Anthropol. 2007 Apr;132(4):584-9]

Rootsweb | 4th April 2007

The GENEALOGY-DNA website at RootsWeb.com is the principal online discussion site for genetic ancestry research.

This lively site is extremely interesting and highly recommended for anyone wanting to look more deeply into this fascinating subject. Among the many topics discussed in recent weeks have been the following:

This is just a small sample of what has been discussed there recently. To browse all the threads visit the archives.

Rootsweb | 1st March 2007

The GENEALOGY-DNA website at RootsWeb.com is the principal online discussion site for genetic ancestry research.

This lively site is extremely interesting and highly recommended for anyone wanting to look more deeply into this fascinating subject. Among the many topics discussed in recent weeks have been the following:

This is just a small sample of what has been discussed there recently. To browse all the threads visit the archives.

A Gut Feeling| 1st March 2007
Further evidence for the spread of modern humans out of Africa has come from a surprising source - gut bacteria!
An international team of researchers headed by Mark Achtman of the Max-Planck Institut für Infektionsbiologie in Berlin looked at the spread of different strains of Helicobacter pylori - a bacterium that infects the stomach. They used the data to identify and date the routes taken by early modern humans as they migrated out of our African motherland.
As our ancestors journeyed out of Africa they carried the bacteria with them and passed them on to their descendants. The researchers have been collecting bacteria from the guts of humans from different ethnic groups around the planet since 1999. Using population genetics models to analyse gene sequences from the bacterial DNA they found that people now living in East Africa had more different strains of the bacteria than people living anywhere else. The further away people lived from East Africa, the fewer the number of strains.
Because genetic diversity increases over time, these findings suggest that H. pylori arose in people living in East Africa and was carried from there as early modern humans left Africa and journeyed around the world. Computer simulations to date the spread of the bacteria suggest a migration out of East Africa approximately 58,000 years ago.
The report was published online in Nature on 7 February 2007.

Museum combines DNA and Fossils | 1st March 2007
DNA and fossil evidence are being combined in an exciting new permanent exhibit on human evolution at New York's famed American Museum of Natural History.
The exhibit breaks with a traditional reliance on using the fossil record to illustrate evolution. Genetic research is able to illustrate evolutionary links between organisms in ways that are not always possible using fossils alone.
Covering 9,000 square feet, the newly-opened Anne and Bernard Spitzer Hall of Human Origins will be regularly updated with information about the latest research, including that carried out by gene sequencing labs on site at the museum.
Museum President Ellen V Futter described it as 'the first major exhibit hall of its kind to present the fossil and genomic record side by side, offering new and compelling evidence that tells a grand and sweeping story of man.'
The American Museum of Natural History is located at Central Park West at 79th Street, New York City. It is open daily from 10 a.m. until 5.45 p.m.
[Sources: Reuters; Museum website]

Native Americans share same Ancestors | 1st March 2007
New research supports the theory that Native Americans are descended from a common founding population that lived on the eastern edge of Siberia.
A team led by the University of California's Kari Schroeder took DNA samples from around 1,500 people around the world, including people from 2 populations in eastern Siberia, 53 in other parts of Asia and 18 Native American populations.
The researchers found the same distinctive genetic signature in at least one person in each of the Native American populations they tested, and also in people in both of the eastern Siberian populations. The signature was not present in any of the other Asian populations they tested.
These findings accord with the idea that Native Americans are descended from a common ancestral population that lived in eastern Siberia, members of which later migrated eastwards into North America. This could have happened between around 25,000 and 15,000 years ago when much of the world's water was locked in the polar ice caps, meaning that coastlines were lower than they are today and Asia and America were connected by a cold and dry bridge of land. It is possible that there were multiple migrations over thousands of years.
Reference: KB Schroeder, TG Schurr, JC Long, NA Rosenberg, MH Crawford, LA Tarskaia, LP Osipova, SI Zhadanov, DG Smith (2007). A private allele ubiquitous in the Americas. Biology Letters.
Further information: New Scientist


Rootsweb | 1st December 2006

The GENEALOGY-DNA website at RootsWeb.com is the principal online discussion site for genetic ancestry research.

This lively site is extremely interesting and highly recommended for anyone wanting to look more deeply into this fascinating subject. Among the many topics discussed in recent weeks have been the following:

This is just a small sample of what has been discussed there recently. To browse all the threads visit the archives.

Neanderthal DNA reveals early split from modern humans | 1st December 2006

For the first time, scientists have sequenced nuclear DNA from a Neanderthal. Analysis of the new data indicates that although modern humans share more than 99.5 per cent of our DNA with our Neanderthal cousins, our evolutionary lineages split around half a million years ago.

The genetic material was retrieved from a thigh bone from a Neanderthal man who lived around 38,000 years ago. While researchers have previously been able to sequence DNA from Neanderthal mitochondria, this provided only limited information. The new research, reported in the journals Nature and Science, extracted DNA from cell nuclei, which encodes most of the genetic 'blueprint' for creating an organism.
Reporting in Nature, Professor Svante Paabo and colleagues from Germany's Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology used direct sequencing to recover more than one million base pairs of Neanderthal DNA.
In another article, in Science, Professor Edward Rubin and colleagues from the Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, California reported how they used a different technique called 'metagenomics', incorporating the genetic fragments into bacteria which then copied themselves. They recovered 65,250 base pairs, less material than with the random direct sequencing method but the metagenomic technique should allow scientists to target specific genetic sequences for study.
Both approaches indicate that the evolutionary lineages of Neanderthals and modern humans split approximately half a million years ago, a figure that broadly accords with previous estimates based on mitochondrial DNA and archaeological data.
No evidence was found for a Neanderthal contribution to the gene pool of modern humans. 'We see no evidence of mixing 40,000, 30,000 years ago in Europe,' said Rubin. 'We don't exclude it, but see no evidence.'
Rubin believes that 'the sequence data will serve as a DNA time machine that will tell us about biology and aspects that we will never be able to get from [Neanderthal] bones and a limited number of associated artefacts.'
Some scientists predict that we may have a rough draft of the complete Neanderthal genome in as little as two years' time.

[Further reading: 'Analysis of one million base pairs of Neanderthal DNA', Nature 444, 330-336, 16 Nov 2006, www.nature.com; 'Sequencing and Analysis of Neanderthal Genomic DNA' , Science 314: 1113-1118, 17 November 2006, www.sciencemag.org]

 

'Captain Gosnold's skeleton': the latest developments | 1st December 2006
New scientific testing has left open the possibility that a skeleton discovered in 2002 is that of Captain Bartholomew Gosnold, one of America's founding fathers.
As we have previously reported (see GeoGene Newsletter June and July 2005 and January 2006), an international team of scientists last year retrieved DNA from a grave at All Saints church in the village of Shelley in Suffolk, England. The seventeenth-century grave was initially thought to belong to Elizabeth Gosnold Tilney, the sister of Captain Bartholomew Gosnold who is said to have founded Jamestown - the first English-speaking colony in the New World - in 1607. In 2002, US archaeologists had discovered what may be Captain Gosnold's skeleton and it was hoped to confirm this by matching mitochondrial DNA from those remains with a sample taken from the Shelley site.
Researchers were disappointed when DNA analysis indicated that the two skeletons were not closely related, but further examination of the Shelley skeleton revealed that it was of a woman who had died aged around 50 and so was not Elizabeth who was about 74 when she died. It therefore remained possible that the Jamestown remains were those of Captain Gosnold.
The results of new tests on the two sets of remains were announced on 21 November 2006. Scientists at the National Environment Research Council Isotope Geosciences Laboratory of the British Geological Survey in Nottingham compared the ratio of strontium and oxygen isotopes in tooth enamel samples to the ratio of those isotopes found in drinking water in different areas. Because teeth form during childhood, this test can help to determine where an individual spent his or her early years.
It is thought that Bartholomew Gosnold was born and grew up in the Otley area of Suffolk, England, where the geology is primarily chalky. The test indicated that the Jamestown skeleton was not that of a man who had spent his childhood in a chalk-dominated terrain, but the possibility that the skeleton is Gosnold's remains because appropriate geological conditions are found just a few miles south of Otley and the man may have been drinking water originating in that area.
The strontium ratio in the Shelley remains was different to that in the Jamestown remains. The result indicated that the woman's childhood may have been spent in the Otley area and suggests that the two individuals did not grown up as siblings in the same household.
While the results do not rule out the possibility that the Jamestown skeleton is that of Captain Gosnold, they also suggest other possible candidates. The skeleton may be that of Captain Gabriel Archer, Jamestown's Recorder, who grew up in Mountnessing in Essex, England, or Sir Ferdinando Wenman, Master of the Ordnance at James Fort, whose family owned property in Twyford, Berkshire and Thame, Oxfordshire, in England.
Having weighed the options, Dr William Kelso, Director of Archaeology at Historic Jamestowne, remains optimistic that the skeleton is Gosnold's, saying: 'Based on historical, archaeological and forensic evidence, Gosnold remains the leading candidate.'
[Further reading: Historic Jamestowne website]

 

Website to trace ancient Welsh ancestry| 1st December 2006
Are you related to the ancient princes of Wales? A new website is being created that will make it much easier to find out.
The site is being put together by the University of Wales in Aberystwyth with the aid of a £300,000 grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. It is based on the work of an Englishman, Dr P C Bartrum, who spent years collating information taken from works on Welsh ancestry, mainly manuscripts from the fifteenth century onwards but also older sources.
It will take around another three years to enter all the information into what will be an online electronic database of Welsh genealogy between AD 300 and AD 1500.
Professor Gruffydd Aled Williams, the university's head of Welsh, described Bartrum's work as 'a mine of information and an important source for academics, historians and literary historians who study this period. It makes it possible to identify a person's lineage, his period and region with a minimum of effort, work which would otherwise take months of researching original manuscripts.
'It will mean that people who can trace their ancestry back to, say, 1550, will be able to go back even further. It is primarily an academic work but ... from the recent surge in interest in genealogy I am sure the website will become widely used.'
[Source: icwales.co.uk]


GeoGene V2 Website Re-launched | 26th September 2006
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