Abstract
A new biotech start-up company based in Oxford, UK, is using mitochondrial DNA to trace family trees – as far back as the first Homo Sapiens to evolve (the-scientist.com, 10 December). Brian Sykes of Oxford University, and the founder of Oxford Ancestors, has spent the past ten years studying mitochondrial DNA of people from around the world to trace descendants of the mitochondrial ‘Eve’, a woman living in Africa some 150 000 years ago. By comparing the control region of mitochondrial DNA – a region that expresses no protein, is not susceptible to selective pressure and is passed strictly from mother to child – an individual's inheritance can be traced back over many generations. Sykes himself has shown that he is related to Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, and his company was set up to deal with a flood of requests from people keen to trace their own mitochondrial genealogy. MJD
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