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Journal ArticleDOI

In the name of the father: surnames and genetics

01 Jun 2001-Trends in Genetics (Elsevier)-Vol. 17, Iss: 6, pp 353-357
TL;DR: Recent studies involving Y-chromosomal haplotyping and surname analysis are promising and indicate that genealogists of the future could be turning to records written in DNA, as well as in paper archives, to solve their problems.
About: This article is published in Trends in Genetics.The article was published on 2001-06-01. It has received 191 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Patronymic surname.
Citations
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DissertationDOI
03 Feb 2020
TL;DR: In this article, the authors used a combination of historical, onomastic, and genetic approaches to investigate Cornish distinctiveness at least over the last two millennia, and found evidence for Cornwall's connectedness with the nearby nations of Ireland, Wales, and Brittany.
Abstract: Understanding genetic diversity among human populations can help uncover their histories. In 2015 the ‘People of the British Isles’ (PoBI) study of autosome-wide diversity revealed subtle but significantly different genetic clusters, including a clear distinction between the neighbouring counties of Cornwall and Devon; it proposed that Bodmin Moor and the River Tamar had formed a barrier between the two. This thesis uses a combination of historical, onomastic, and genetic approaches to investigate differentiation in this region in more detail.A survey of the historical literature examines whether Cornwall has been isolated from the rest of England and the Continent. Evidence from archaeology, historical documents, and place-names shows that both Roman and Anglo-Saxon influence on Cornwall was less than that on Devon, supporting the idea of Cornish distinctiveness at least over the last two millennia. However, the historical record also shows abundant evidence for Cornwall’s connectedness with the nearby nations of Ireland, Wales, and Brittany.Based on census and parish records, research was undertaken to analyse the specificity and persistence over time of surnames of the people of the Bodmin Moor region between 1702 and 1881. This showed a lack of regionally-specific names, and clear evidence of input from Devon and the rest of England.Analysis of the male-specific Y chromosome examined whether the autosomal Cornwall-Devon distinction seen in the PoBI study was also reflected in paternal lineages. Surname-ascertained samples were recruited from Bodmin Moor and supplemented with PoBI samples. DNAs were analysed with short tandem repeats and single nucleotide polymorphisms. Population genetic analysis supported Cornish distinctiveness, with Bodmin Moor more closely related to Devon. Differences are compatible with lower Anglo-Saxon influence on west Cornwall. Co-analysis with other datasets clusters Cornwall most closely with Wales and Ireland and supports affiliation with Brittany, while Bodmin Moor and Devon more closely resemble other English populations.

9 citations


Cites background from "In the name of the father: surnames..."

  • ...King et al. (2006) compared pairs of seemingly unrelated British men with the same surname and found that signals of coancestry were stronger in rarer surnames, which are more likely to have one originating founder (Jobling 2001)....

    [...]

  • ...More recently, they have helped to track disease in epidemiological studies and, by sampling modern populations, have been used to uncover the structure of past human populations which have been obscured by recent migrations and expansions (Jobling 2001)....

    [...]

Dissertation
08 May 2015
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the genetic ancestry and geographic origin of the Bolivian population and contribute to new evidences about the history of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (TAST).
Abstract: The following thesis will explore the genetic ancestry and geographic origin of the Bolivian population. Bolivia or Plurinational State of Bolivia as it is officially known is a multiethnic country located in the center of the South American continent. According to the official governmental website, Bolivia has 36 official languages which are reflected in the multiethnic character of the country. Among the Bolivian population persons of African descendants, or ‘Afro-Bolivians’, respectively, are recognized finally as a constituent ethnic group by the Bolivian government. The term ‘Afro-Bolivia’ will be used throughout this thesis as it was formerly used by Juan Angola Maconde, author of the article “Los afrodescendientes bolivianos”, published in 2008 in The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology. The terms African descendant and ‘Afro-Bolivian’ or other ‘Afro-American’, respectively, are here used interchangeable. In this thesis the ‘Afro-Bolivian’ community Tocana will be the main representative group for all these communities of Bolivia whose history is directly linked to the TAST. Threfore, the community Tocana will be used here in order to investigate more specifically the African ancestry and geographic origin; however, the African ancestry is present in other localities of Bolivia. The aim of this thesis is to contribute to new evidences about the history of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

9 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The status competition model of cultural production as mentioned in this paper argues that cultural displays often, but not exclusively, signal the possession of important cultural competencies to others in a coalition and that cultural creators are recompensed with prestige, which they can use to secure mates or invest in their kin and lineage.
Abstract: Humans create many apparently functionless artifacts such as paintings, novels, poems, films, and decorative blankets. From an evolutionary perspective, such creations appear somewhat puzzling. Why create artifacts that do not appear to contribute to survival? One recent explanation, the cultural courtship model, argued that such creations are used to signal genetic health to the other sex. In this way, cultural creators are potentially rewarded with higher quality mates. We propose an alternative (but not completely contradictory) model, the status competition model of cultural production, which argues that cultural displays often, but not exclusively, signal the possession of important cultural competencies to others in a coalition. Cultural creators are recompensed with prestige, which they can use to secure mates or invest in their kin and lineage. We examine evidence for and against these models and conclude that the status competition model can better explain cultural production than current theory.

9 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Application of Y chromosome analyses in the family genealogy studies will be a most important part of historical anthropology researches because of its strong power in resolving many doubtful cases existing for hundreds of years.
Abstract: Most people get their surnames from their fathers. The surnames therefore well exhibit patrilineal heredity. Strict patrilineal heredity is also obeyed by parts of our genome, the Y chromosome non-recombinating portion. Therefore, men sharing a surname are expected to have similar Y chromosomes. However, association between surnames and Y chromosomes is always weak or absent due to the complicated social behaviors of surnames, e.g., various founders for a surname, surname changing, and non-paternity events. To set up better association, the family genealogies in combination with Y chromosomes should be used in historical anthropology studies. Two kinds of markers on Y chromosomes, single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) and short tandem repeat (STR), are widely used in setting up the Y chromosome genealogy and estimate the time. Y chromosome studies show strong power in resolving many doubtful cases existing for hundreds of years. Application of Y chromosome analyses in the family genealogy studies will be a most important part of historical anthropology researches.

9 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Isonymy is used to test predictions about the genetic structure of Irish populations made on the basis of geography and population history, and suggests that isonymy can be used to investigate the population structure and origin of Irish emigrant groups in Britain and potentially throughout the Irish diaspora.
Abstract: This article uses isonymy to test predictions about the genetic structure of Irish populations made on the basis of geography and population history, and compares the mid-nineteenth century population of Ireland with the late nineteenth century Irish-born population resident in England and Wales Surname data were derived from (1) the householders named in the index to Griffith's valuation of Ireland, a survey undertaken between 1846 and 1864, and (2) of Irish-born residents named in 1881 census of England and Wales Visual representation of the Griffith's valuation isonymy matrix by multidimensional scaling (MDS) gives a result very close to the geographical distribution of Irish counties, and Mantel matrix correlation shows random isonymy between counties to be negatively associated with geographical distance, generally decaying according to a pattern of isolation-by-distance, with exceptions that can be explained in terms of Irish population history Some 141,360 Irish-born residents in England and Wales at the 1881 census were assigned to an Irish county of origin, and random isonymy by county of birth for this group also shows a close correspondence to Irish geography The Mantel matrix correlation between the Irish in Ireland and the Irish in England is 0855, R(2) = 07306, indicating that the emigrant Irish in England were representative of the populations of the Irish counties from which they were derived This result, together with the strong geographical patterning of surnames in Ireland, suggests that isonymy can be used to investigate the population structure and origin of Irish emigrant groups in Britain and potentially throughout the Irish diaspora

9 citations

References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Eric S. Lander1, Lauren Linton1, Bruce W. Birren1, Chad Nusbaum1  +245 moreInstitutions (29)
15 Feb 2001-Nature
TL;DR: The results of an international collaboration to produce and make freely available a draft sequence of the human genome are reported and an initial analysis is presented, describing some of the insights that can be gleaned from the sequence.
Abstract: The human genome holds an extraordinary trove of information about human development, physiology, medicine and evolution. Here we report the results of an international collaboration to produce and make freely available a draft sequence of the human genome. We also present an initial analysis of the data, describing some of the insights that can be gleaned from the sequence.

22,269 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
J. Craig Venter1, Mark Raymond Adams1, Eugene W. Myers1, Peter W. Li1  +269 moreInstitutions (12)
16 Feb 2001-Science
TL;DR: Comparative genomic analysis indicates vertebrate expansions of genes associated with neuronal function, with tissue-specific developmental regulation, and with the hemostasis and immune systems are indicated.
Abstract: A 2.91-billion base pair (bp) consensus sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome was generated by the whole-genome shotgun sequencing method. The 14.8-billion bp DNA sequence was generated over 9 months from 27,271,853 high-quality sequence reads (5.11-fold coverage of the genome) from both ends of plasmid clones made from the DNA of five individuals. Two assembly strategies-a whole-genome assembly and a regional chromosome assembly-were used, each combining sequence data from Celera and the publicly funded genome effort. The public data were shredded into 550-bp segments to create a 2.9-fold coverage of those genome regions that had been sequenced, without including biases inherent in the cloning and assembly procedure used by the publicly funded group. This brought the effective coverage in the assemblies to eightfold, reducing the number and size of gaps in the final assembly over what would be obtained with 5.11-fold coverage. The two assembly strategies yielded very similar results that largely agree with independent mapping data. The assemblies effectively cover the euchromatic regions of the human chromosomes. More than 90% of the genome is in scaffold assemblies of 100,000 bp or more, and 25% of the genome is in scaffolds of 10 million bp or larger. Analysis of the genome sequence revealed 26,588 protein-encoding transcripts for which there was strong corroborating evidence and an additional approximately 12,000 computationally derived genes with mouse matches or other weak supporting evidence. Although gene-dense clusters are obvious, almost half the genes are dispersed in low G+C sequence separated by large tracts of apparently noncoding sequence. Only 1.1% of the genome is spanned by exons, whereas 24% is in introns, with 75% of the genome being intergenic DNA. Duplications of segmental blocks, ranging in size up to chromosomal lengths, are abundant throughout the genome and reveal a complex evolutionary history. Comparative genomic analysis indicates vertebrate expansions of genes associated with neuronal function, with tissue-specific developmental regulation, and with the hemostasis and immune systems. DNA sequence comparisons between the consensus sequence and publicly funded genome data provided locations of 2.1 million single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). A random pair of human haploid genomes differed at a rate of 1 bp per 1250 on average, but there was marked heterogeneity in the level of polymorphism across the genome. Less than 1% of all SNPs resulted in variation in proteins, but the task of determining which SNPs have functional consequences remains an open challenge.

12,098 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A method for constructing networks from recombination-free population data that combines features of Kruskal's algorithm for finding minimum spanning trees by favoring short connections, and Farris's maximum-parsimony (MP) heuristic algorithm, which sequentially adds new vertices called "median vectors", except that the MJ method does not resolve ties.
Abstract: Reconstructing phylogenies from intraspecific data (such as human mitochondrial DNA variation) is often a challenging task because of large sample sizes and small genetic distances between individuals. The resulting multitude of plausible trees is best expressed by a network which displays alternative potential evolutionary paths in the form of cycles. We present a method ("median joining" [MJ]) for constructing networks from recombination-free population data that combines features of Kruskal's algorithm for finding minimum spanning trees by favoring short connections, and Farris's maximum-parsimony (MP) heuristic algorithm, which sequentially adds new vertices called "median vectors", except that our MJ method does not resolve ties. The MJ method is hence closely related to the earlier approach of Foulds, Hendy, and Penny for estimating MP trees but can be adjusted to the level of homoplasy by setting a parameter epsilon. Unlike our earlier reduced median (RM) network method, MJ is applicable to multistate characters (e.g., amino acid sequences). An additional feature is the speed of the implemented algorithm: a sample of 800 worldwide mtDNA hypervariable segment I sequences requires less than 3 h on a Pentium 120 PC. The MJ method is demonstrated on a Tibetan mitochondrial DNA RFLP data set.

9,937 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A new algorithm for finding tandem repeats which works without the need to specify either the pattern or pattern size is presented and its ability to detect tandem repeats that have undergone extensive mutational change is demonstrated.
Abstract: A tandem repeat in DNA is two or more contiguous, approximate copies of a pattern of nucleotides. Tandem repeats have been shown to cause human disease, may play a variety of regulatory and evolutionary roles and are important laboratory and analytic tools. Extensive knowledge about pattern size, copy number, mutational history, etc. for tandem repeats has been limited by the inability to easily detect them in genomic sequence data. In this paper, we present a new algorithm for finding tandem repeats which works without the need to specify either the pattern or pattern size. We model tandem repeats by percent identity and frequency of indels between adjacent pattern copies and use statistically based recognition criteria. We demonstrate the algorithm’s speed and its ability to detect tandem repeats that have undergone extensive mutational change by analyzing four sequences: the human frataxin gene, the human β T cell receptor locus sequence and two yeast chromosomes. These sequences range in size from 3 kb up to 700 kb. A World Wide Web server interface at c3.biomath.mssm.edu/trf.html has been established for automated use of the program.

6,577 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This book aims to provide a history of Chinese modern art from 17th Century to the present day through the lens of 20th Century critics, practitioners, journalists, and mediaeval and modern-day critics.
Abstract: J. Craig Venter,* Mark D. Adams, Eugene W. Myers, Peter W. Li, Richard J. Mural, Granger G. Sutton, Hamilton O. Smith, Mark Yandell, Cheryl A. Evans, Robert A. Holt, Jeannine D. Gocayne, Peter Amanatides, Richard M. Ballew, Daniel H. Huson, Jennifer Russo Wortman, Qing Zhang, Chinnappa D. Kodira, Xiangqun H. Zheng, Lin Chen, Marian Skupski, Gangadharan Subramanian, Paul D. Thomas, Jinghui Zhang, George L. Gabor Miklos, Catherine Nelson, Samuel Broder, Andrew G. Clark, Joe Nadeau, Victor A. McKusick, Norton Zinder, Arnold J. Levine, Richard J. Roberts, Mel Simon, Carolyn Slayman, Michael Hunkapiller, Randall Bolanos, Arthur Delcher, Ian Dew, Daniel Fasulo, Michael Flanigan, Liliana Florea, Aaron Halpern, Sridhar Hannenhalli, Saul Kravitz, Samuel Levy, Clark Mobarry, Knut Reinert, Karin Remington, Jane Abu-Threideh, Ellen Beasley, Kendra Biddick, Vivien Bonazzi, Rhonda Brandon, Michele Cargill, Ishwar Chandramouliswaran, Rosane Charlab, Kabir Chaturvedi, Zuoming Deng, Valentina Di Francesco, Patrick Dunn, Karen Eilbeck, Carlos Evangelista, Andrei E. Gabrielian, Weiniu Gan, Wangmao Ge, Fangcheng Gong, Zhiping Gu, Ping Guan, Thomas J. Heiman, Maureen E. Higgins, Rui-Ru Ji, Zhaoxi Ke, Karen A. Ketchum, Zhongwu Lai, Yiding Lei, Zhenya Li, Jiayin Li, Yong Liang, Xiaoying Lin, Fu Lu, Gennady V. Merkulov, Natalia Milshina, Helen M. Moore, Ashwinikumar K Naik, Vaibhav A. Narayan, Beena Neelam, Deborah Nusskern, Douglas B. Rusch, Steven Salzberg, Wei Shao, Bixiong Shue, Jingtao Sun, Zhen Yuan Wang, Aihui Wang, Xin Wang, Jian Wang, Ming-Hui Wei, Ron Wides, Chunlin Xiao, Chunhua Yan, Alison Yao, Jane Ye, Ming Zhan, Weiqing Zhang, Hongyu Zhang, Qi Zhao, Liansheng Zheng, Fei Zhong, Wenyan Zhong, Shiaoping C. Zhu, Shaying Zhao, Dennis Gilbert, Suzanna Baumhueter, Gene Spier, Christine Carter, Anibal Cravchik, Trevor Woodage, Feroze Ali, Huijin An, Aderonke Awe, Danita Baldwin, Holly Baden, Mary Barnstead, Ian Barrow, Karen Beeson, Dana Busam, Amy Carver, Angela Center, Ming Lai Cheng, Liz Curry, Steve Danaher, Lionel Davenport, Raymond Desilets, Susanne Dietz, Kristina Dodson, Lisa Doup, Steven Ferriera, Neha Garg, Andres Gluecksmann, Brit Hart, Jason Haynes, Charles Haynes, Cheryl Heiner, Suzanne Hladun, Damon Hostin, Jarrett Houck, Timothy Howland, Chinyere Ibegwam, Jeffery Johnson, Francis Kalush, Lesley Kline, Shashi Koduru, Amy Love, Felecia Mann, David May, Steven McCawley, Tina McIntosh, Ivy McMullen, Mee Moy, Linda Moy, Brian Murphy, Keith Nelson, Cynthia Pfannkoch, Eric Pratts, Vinita Puri, Hina Qureshi, Matthew Reardon, Robert Rodriguez, Yu-Hui Rogers, Deanna Romblad, Bob Ruhfel, Richard Scott, Cynthia Sitter, Michelle Smallwood, Erin Stewart, Renee Strong, Ellen Suh, Reginald Thomas, Ni Ni Tint, Sukyee Tse, Claire Vech, Gary Wang, Jeremy Wetter, Sherita Williams, Monica Williams, Sandra Windsor, Emily Winn-Deen, Keriellen Wolfe, Jayshree Zaveri, Karena Zaveri, Josep F. Abril, Roderic Guigó, Michael J. Campbell, Kimmen V. Sjolander, Brian Karlak, Anish Kejariwal, Huaiyu Mi, Betty Lazareva, Thomas Hatton, Apurva Narechania, Karen Diemer, Anushya Muruganujan, Nan Guo, Shinji Sato, Vineet Bafna, Sorin Istrail, Ross Lippert, Russell Schwartz, Brian Walenz, Shibu Yooseph, David Allen, Anand Basu, James Baxendale, Louis Blick, Marcelo Caminha, John Carnes-Stine, Parris Caulk, Yen-Hui Chiang, My Coyne, Carl Dahlke, Anne Deslattes Mays, Maria Dombroski, Michael Donnelly, Dale Ely, Shiva Esparham, Carl Fosler, Harold Gire, Stephen Glanowski, Kenneth Glasser, Anna Glodek, Mark Gorokhov, Ken Graham, Barry Gropman, Michael Harris, Jeremy Heil, Scott Henderson, Jeffrey Hoover, Donald Jennings, Catherine Jordan, James Jordan, John Kasha, Leonid Kagan, Cheryl Kraft, Alexander Levitsky, Mark Lewis, Xiangjun Liu, John Lopez, Daniel Ma, William Majoros, Joe McDaniel, Sean Murphy, Matthew Newman, Trung Nguyen, Ngoc Nguyen, Marc Nodell, Sue Pan, Jim Peck, Marshall Peterson, William Rowe, Robert Sanders, John Scott, Michael Simpson, Thomas Smith, Arlan Sprague, Timothy Stockwell, Russell Turner, Eli Venter, Mei Wang, Meiyuan Wen, David Wu, Mitchell Wu, Ashley Xia, Ali Zandieh, Xiaohong Zhu T H E H U M A N G E N O M E

5,205 citations