<Research Notes>Who are the ancestors as seen from genomic information?

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  • <研究ノート>ゲノム情報から見た祖先とは誰か?
  • ゲノム情報から見た祖先とは誰か?
  • ゲノム ジョウホウ カラ ミタ ソセン トワ ダレ カ?

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Abstract

The search for personal ancestors using DNA has recently been commercialized by DTC . However, the scientific meaning of "ancestors" from the viewpoint of genetic information is not generally recognized, and explanations from DNA testing companies are not generally sufficient. In theory, there are 2n ancestors before our n generations. All populations have a wide range of close marriages (inbreeding), so some of the 2n people are the same person, and the actual number of ancestors is much less than the theoretical number. However, there is no guarantee that the 2n people who lived in the past belonged to a single ancestral population. It depends on when ancestors are considered. If it was 100 generations (about 3, 000 years) ago, there were theoretically 2100 ancestors of a particular individual, and it is unlikely that this astronomical number of 2100 ancestors belonged to the same ancestral population. Most Japanese DTC companies offer ancestral search services based on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). Since mtDNA is inherited only by the maternal lineage, the ancestor shown in this service is only 1 out of 2n people, and the remaining (2n−1) people are ignored. Similar services in the U. S. perform it based on nuclear DNA and present ancestors in percentages, but the ancestry in the U. S. DTC refers to ancestors several hundred years ago, while in Japan DTC refers to ancestors tens of thousands of years ago. Thus, not only is it important to understand the ancestor search with a sufficient literacy of genetics, but also the context of speaking ancestry depends upon the consumers using DTC, which in turn depends upon the culture shared by the modern people.

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  • 人文學報

    人文學報 114 195-204, 2019-12-25

    THE INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH IN HUMANITIES, KYOTO UNIVERSITY

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