My genetic profile is finished and I’m an H: Your mtDNA results identify you as a member of haplogroup H.
(See: The story’s in the genes and The story’s in the genes – update.)
Like everyone else on the planet my earliest known ancestors lived in Africa. Then over thousands of years their descendants migrated through the “Saharan Gateway” to the Middle East, up to the northern parts of Europe and across to the west. Then in recent times my grandparents, my parents and I were all born in England. Apparently,
Half of all Europeans are group H. Many North Africans and Middle Easterners are also members of this group, which has numerous subdivisions limited to more specific geographic locales.
H’s geographic distribution reaches as far as northern India and central Asia. Even on these fringes of its vast range it occurs in about 5 to 10 percent of all people tested.
The first mtDNA to be fully sequenced belonged to a European individual of haplogroup H.
The researchers can know all this because I have one substitution (transition) in my Mitochondrial HVR I Sequence: I have a C in one position where the reference sequence has a T.
Yeah, that sentence makes zero sense to me too. You know, people refer to rocket science and brain surgery as the epitome of complexity, but I think they have nothing on genetics. Since I started on this project I’ve been reading the info and watching the supplied movies and so on and I still don’t really have a clue what it’s all about. Read the following with caution, as it’s what I think it all means, based on casting about for something to help me understand it.
Genes are chemicals. The important chemicals in genes are called nucleotides. The different nucleotides that make up our genes are:
- Guanine (G)
- Adenine (A)
- Thymine (T)
- Cytosine (C)
Guanine, for example has a Chemical formula of: C5H5N5O. That means one molecule of Guanine is made up of 5 atoms of Carbon, 5 of Hydrogen, 5 of Nitrogen and one of Oxygen.
So, somewhere in amongst my genes I have a molecule of Cytosine where the reference gene has a molecule of Thymine.
OK, now my brain officially hurts. I suggest you visit the Genographic Project’s Genetics Overview for further explanation about genes.
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