Sunday, October 24, 2010

Mitochondrial Eve



Mitochondrial Eve is defined as the woman who is the matrilineal most recent common ancestor for all living humans. It is believed that most of the ancestors of Mitochondrial Eve originated from the region of East Africa. This idea further confirms that all humans have some type of Mitochondrial DNA in their body. Mitochondrial Eve is thought to be a woman that lived in eastern Africa about 140,000 years ago. The concept is distinct from most recent common ancestor because the number of ancestors one has goes up exponentially as one travels back into time, the most recent shared common ancestor of all humanity lived more recently, probably less than 100,000 years ago. But due to sexual recombination of nuclear DNA, every living person today has only a fraction of shared genetic material with that common ancestor.
Painting of Mitochondrial Eve about             
150,000 years ago.                                        
Dominican woman
Male from Cameroon
Nigerian Women

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