Friend has a question about DNA

[Ian David]

> ----- Message from [e-mail] ---------
> Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2005 17:14:23 +0100
> From: Gershon Caudill <[e-mail]>
> Subject: I Need an answer about DNA
>
> Can anyone tell me if the following hypothesis is true or false?
>
>
> On the Beliefnet "Learning About Mormonism" Discussion Board the following
> was posted;
>
> withwonderingawe wrote:
> 6/3/2005 9:32 AM
>
> "Some of the following I wrote for the debate board earlier;
>
> The early Latter Day Saints had some miss conception about the Lamanite
> people. One they picture the story as taking place over the whole of the
> North and South America, when it probably only covered Central America and a
> little of South America.
>
> Another is that this land was empty when they got here but a careful reading
> of the Book of Mormon kind of dispels that notion. Even with the Jaredites
> there were others which were ³swept off Š. before them², Ether 14. So we
> need to throw out some of the old notions.
>
>
> I got this info from an article at Fair written by Michael Ash
>
> The claim is that genetic markers can disappear or drift.
>
> I¹ll summarize this;
>
> With the mtDNA they are following a single line of dna transmission
> grandmother>mother> granddaughter. But if you go back two generation there
> are 2 grandmothers who will pass on their dna to you, you will not get one
> of your grandma¹s dna. If you go back 10 generations there will be 512
> female ancestral contributors to your dna makeup. ³there are 70 generations
> between Native Americans and Sariah² . That would be more contributors than
> there have been people on earth, so inter marrying plays into a big part of
> the picture.
>
> So let¹s look at this;
>
> If I have a white grandfather and he marries a Mexican woman and they have a
> baby girl when she grows up and marries a Mexican man and they have me I
> won¹t receive any of my white great grandmother¹s mtdna, right?
>
>
> So let¹s summaries the Book of Mormon people.
>
> Lehi¹s group included Lehi and Ishmael both descendants of Joseph who¹s wife
> was an Egyptian. Their mtDNA marker is going to very much different than
> Judah¹s children. But there was I bet a lot of inter marrying between
> tribes, although Paul new he was a son of Benjamin.
>
> Then there was the Mulekites who were people that came out of Jerusalem,
> their tribes are not mentioned.
>
> Then running around in the back ground ya got the Jaredites who¹s dna linage
> is unknown. Some non Mormon archeologists think the Olmec might have been
> black which would throw in some interesting dna into the mix. The biggest
> opposition to the Book of Mormon is the apparent bigotry of being cursed
> with a black skin which the Lamanites who inter married with the Jaredites
> received. Wouldn¹t it be funny if it¹s the one thing that proves the Book of
> Mormon true?
>
> But then maybe Jared was a closer dna match to those Asian who were probably
> the overwhelming majority.
>
>
> The Book of Mormon specifically mentions; ³the Nephites were driven and
> slaughtered with an exceedingly great slaughter; their women and their
> children were again sacrificed unto idols.² Book of Mormon 4: 21
>
>
> I think we can assume that the remaining men if many would have married into
> the surrounding population absorbing their non Israelite mother¹s mtdna.
>
>
>
> How can anyone be sure if Sariah¹s mtdna survived?"
>
>
>
> ----- End message from [e-mail] -----

[BlueEyedSon]

1. Sorry i don't have time to read and analyze the whole thing.

mtDNA passes through females to their offspring via the egg cell (i.e. not the nuclear DNA). Period. That is all you need to know to figure any problem involving the inheriting of mtDNA.

A few years ago some scientists analyzed the mtDNA from a very large sample population of test subjects around the globe and determined there were 7 "Eves".

[Crunchy Frog]

2. I don't understand the whole email

but I do know that mtDNA is only passed through the female line. That's because it is only contained in the egg cell and not in the sperm, since the mitochondria is an organelle that is descended from an independently living organism, and therefore has its own DNA. A man will inherit his mtDNA from his mother, but will not pass it on to his offspring.

I can't really make out what the rest of the email is asking. I'm assuming that Sariah refers to the biblical Sarah. It's my understanding that she only had one child, male, and therefore there is no possible way that her mtDNA could have survived. Anyway, female lineages aren't really traced biblically, only male ones.

Mitochondrial DNA is not related to, and does not mix with, regular DNA.

[applegrove]

3. They use mitochondrial DNA. It is a thing inside our cells that lives

a completely separate life than the human DNA (in the nucleus which mixes every generation). All mitochondrial DNA does is come up with mutations every few thousands of years. That is it. All by itself it changes rarely. It doesn't exchange anything with anyone. And you get it from your mom always - since it is her mitochondria sitting in the egg that gets passed on. The sperm doesn't have the mitochondria with it. So they figure out what the rate of mutation is for mitochondria - and they estimate that - and that is how they go back in time with it.

It is controversial.

Within a week after the Europeans arrived - they passed on disease and many, many (the majority by far) of the indigenous Americans died in wave after wave of influenza, small pox, etc. They had no defenses against such 'outside' disease. Nobody got to the interior in a timely enough fashion in the continental USA to know what that looked like. There were 200 years of disease before anyone with a pen and paper hit the Midwest. So nobody really knows what the population was. We just found out what the survivors were up to.