News and Views

National Geographic has a project called The Genographic Project. They are collecting DNA from people all over the world to “help answer fundamental questions about where humans originated and how we came to populate the Earth.” So far over a half million people have contributed DNA.

Gisele and I are also participating in this project. We sent them a DNA sample (collected from inside our cheeks). In return, they will analyze it and determine where our ancestors came from and what path they most likely followed out of Africa. They also measure the breakdown of our heritage, including the percent of Neanderthal ancestry.

Besides looking at general DNA composition, they focus on the Y-chromosome (for men) and mitochondrial chromosomes (for everyone). Since the Y chromosome gets passed down essentially unchanged from father to son, it is very useful for plotting paternal ancestry. Mitochondria, on the other hand, are contained in the mother’s egg cell and get passed down to all her children essentially unchanged, so those chromosomes can be used to plot maternal ancestry. In both cases “essentially unchanged” means that in each generation there are a few mutations that occur and get passed on and help further refine lineages.

Since my siblings all have the same Y-chromosome as I have (except Donna), and we all have the same mitochondrial DNA, my results will apply equally to them.

Here’s a video describing the project.

We just sent it in today and it takes several weeks to complete the analysis. Once we hear back I will post some results here.

Note: They do not test for any genetic diseases, etc.