Mitochondrial Eve?!

Whilst doing some research for my dissertation piece, I stumbled upon a very interesting topic about a woman; mitochondrial Eve.
According to the experts in human evolutionary genetics, Mitochondrial eve is the matrilineal, most recent common ancestor of modern humans! To you and me, this simply means that Mitochondrial Eve is our great, great, great, greatest, even greater than that, grandmother.

So how did the experts figure this out? Mitochondrial DNA is passed from mother to offspring without recombination, so therefore, all mitochondrial DNA in every living person is exactly identical to their mother's, and her mother's mother, and so on. So therefore we can use mitochondrial DNA to trace back the earliest of modern humans. Mitochondrial Eve is estimated to have lived around 160,000 to 200,000 years ago, in East Africa. Unlike the Biblical Eve, Mitochondrial eve was not the first and only woman alive during her time, however, her offspring are the only ones who made it into modern humanity, meaning the offspring of the other women of her time died off at some point. e.g. by only having male offspring that could not pass on the genetic information, or by dying through natural causes before reproducing. Times were tough back then. (I imagine). It was the discovery of mitochondrial Eve that made the hypothesis that modern humans originated recently from Africa and then spread from Africa to the rest of the world, replacing the archaic human populations that existed at the time, such as the neanderthals, the predominant and leading theory supporting our origin.

Y - Chromosomal AdamMitochondrial Eve is not our only most recent common ancestor! Meet Y-Chromosomal Adam. The Y chromosome is another part of the genome that is not shuffled about by evolutionary mechanisms in order to generate diversity. This means that the male Y chromosome is passed on in tact, so therefore Y chromosomal Adam is our great, great, most greatest, even greater than that grandfather. Y-chromosomal Adam is estimated to have lived also in Africa but at a different time to Eve, 140,000 years ago. Using mitochondrial DNA analysis we can look back on the genetic ancestry of the modern human like never before.

In my next post, I will be explaining the four main thoeries which try to explain the origin of the modern human.