How to determine relationship through mitochondrial DNA?

Question

Does the sequence of mitochondrial DNA have to go down the female line? For example if both women ? shared the same great grandmother - could the line be traced down to a first (female) cousin?

Answer 1

Mitochondrial DNA is only inherited from maternal line since the part of the sperm that actually enters into the egg cell does not contain mitochondria.

See the diagram:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Acrosome_reaction_diagram.svg

The genetic sequence of the mtDNA of closely related women will be nearly identical and will be traceable through subsequent offspring....great grandmother-> grandmother -> mother and other female siblings -> offspring (first cousins)

This would also be true for the male first cousins, since the paternal mtDNA is not inherited.

Answer 2

OK, I used to run a business testing for mitochondrial diseases and have attended plenty of scientific seminars on the topic. I used to even teahc this topic. So here goes. Mitochondrial DNA is independent of the "other" human DNA with 23 pairs of chromosomes. This DNA is sometimes referred to as the nuclear DNA or nDNA while mitochondrial DNA is referred to as mtDNA as another person here has correctly referenced. mtDNA is passed maternally to ALL children - males and female. This is because the mtDNA comes from the EGG, not from sperm.

In addition, mtDNA is extremely stable since it is a closed loop and pretty much survives anything. Also, Since every cell in the body (except mature RBC) has multiple mitochondria, it is very easy to harvest mtDNA.

Now to answer the question, a family can get tested for their mtDNA "type" and figure out who received mtDNA from which female ancestor and therefore, related.

You can do a simple interent search and find plenty of companies doing these tests for $99.

Answer 3

Because its carried on the X chromosome it can only be passed via the maternal line males being XY and females XX.

It does however follow the same rules as ordinary DNA matching but with a much smaller section to sample from as you are only taking about one chromosome.

As the previous person said if two people have a shared female ancestor then it may be possible to show that they are likely to be related.

The way that Mitochondrial DNA tends to work in the UK (it is very expensive and tends to be used to my knowledge mostly in serious crime cases) it is is used to prove that there is no relation as opposed to that there is definitely a relation as if you try to use it to prove people share a common female ancestor more than one generation back the probability that they are related is not very compelling.

The reason for this is with a small section of DNA to compare the differences in key sections across the population is less than than for the whole genome. You have to bear in mind that the difference between human DNA and chimpanzee DNA is only about 1% to start with and when you then just compare one of the chromatids on our 24 chromosomes you aren't really going to find that much difference

Answer 4

Hi. The mitochondrial DNA is passed from the female side to both sexes, I believe. The trace can be followed to a single female individual ancestor (who some call "Eve" in deferrance to one form of history). So I think the answer is yes.

Answer 5

Your mitochondrial DNA is what you inherit from your mother. So, technically there is a mitochondrial Eve that scientists are looking for

Answer 6

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