The Scientist 15[24]:1, Dec. 10, 2001
NEWS
Ancient Ancestry
Biotech genealogy company grafts Paleolithic roots to family trees
By Tom Hollon
Your ancestors didn't travel to the New World on the Mayflower? Not
listed in
Burke's Peerage and Baronetage? No worries, mate. For a couple of
hundred
bucks, Oxford Ancestors, a new British biotech company, will add cachet
to your
lineage by extending it back at least 10,000 years. You may be more of a
blueblood than you know, a long-lost cousin to royalty.
Take commoner Bryan Sykes, for instance, who is professor of human
genetics at
the University of Oxford and founder of Oxford Ancestors. Sykes has
discovered
he is related to Nicholas II, last Tsar of Russia. And now the
mitochondrial
DNA analysis Sykes applies to his own family tree is available to
everyone.
Building on Sykes' research on the genetic origins of human populations,
Oxford
Ancestors is the world's first company to place mitochondrial DNA
analysis in
the service of genealogy.
Full text
http://www.the-scientist.com/yr2001/dec/hollon_p1_011210.html