All about Mitochondrial Eve
IF YOU’RE AMONG THE DOZEN or so Americans who still haven’t read or heard about “The Da Vinci Code,” stop here. The mega-bestseller by Dan Brown, the movie version of which is coming soon to a cineplex near you, asserts that Mary Magdalene married Jesus of Nazareth and that their offspring survive today. It’s a blasphemous thesis for a lot of Christians, but if it were true, Mary Magdalene would rank right up there with the other New Testament Mary -- Jesus’ mother -- in a Mother’s Day Hall of Fame.
But rather than canonize either of those Marys as Founding Mother, we suggest bestowing that honor on a more ancient ancestress: Eve. No, not the archetypal woman fashioned out of Adam’s rib in Genesis but her scientific namesake, Mitochondrial Eve.
Mito-what? Mitochondria are structures in the human cell that have their own DNA, which is passed intact (with occasional mutations) from mother to child. Studies of mitochondria taken from people around the world have led many scientists to conclude that everyone alive today has among his or her ancestors a woman who lived in Africa about 140,000 years ago.
Enter Mitochondrial Eve, who was first identified nearly 20 years ago by researchers at UC Berkeley. They linked her to the still controversial “out-of-Africa” theory, which holds that all people today are descended from a hardy band of modern humans who left Africa within the last 100,000 years. Even anthropologists who dispute that theory, though, acknowledge that everyone alive today conceivably could trace their mitochondrial DNA back to Eve.
In recent years, geneticists have gone on to identify various “daughters of Eve” whose distinctive mitochondrial DNA can be found in various branches of the human family. For a fee, genetic testing companies will even analyze your mitochondrial DNA (obtained by a swab of the inside of the mouth) and tell you who’s your mama among Mitochondrial Eve’s daughters. One firm, Oxford Ancestors, advertises that its MatriLine service “interprets your deep maternal ancestry, linking you -- if your roots are in Europe -- to one of seven women: Ursula, Tara, Helena, Katrine, Velda, Xenia or Jasmine.”
But if you could send only one Mother’s Day card through a time warp, it would have to be addressed to Mitochondrial Eve, the mother of all mothers. Since you can’t do that, why not be nice to your “brothers and sisters” -- that is, everyone. Your mother would definitely approve.
