make money online Mapping the Genome: Another mistake in a scientific journal dealing with human genetics:

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Another mistake in a scientific journal dealing with human genetics:

A particular article by the name of Mitochondrial DNA Diversity in Indigenous Populations of the Southern Extent of Siberia, and the Origins of Native American Haplogroups  has incorrectly labeled a sibling of M8a as haplogroup S and this information was subsequently copied in Genetic diversity of two haploid markers in the Udegey population from southeastern Siberia.  Apparently this error has given rise to scientific misinformation and could of easily started a  false rumor that a special genetic link exists between the Australians and the Siberians. Obviously it is important that we carefully read and review any particular scientific paper before making any unusual conclusions.

4 comments:

Maju said...

Whoa, that's a little bomb! Which is the source? Paper's author, title, link? Your link is just an automated excel download but the paper?

Maju said...

Second thoughts: the paper may be Starikovskaya 2005, Mitochondrial DNA Diversity in Indigenous Populations of the Southern Extent of Siberia, and the Origins of Native American Haplogroups. However I see that the selected marker for haplogroup S is a substitution at location 14465, and I cannot find this marker at the reference mtDNA tree at PhyloTree, which only mentions Hudjasov 2007 in relation with haplogroup S.

So maybe it's a case of misidentification? It has happened before.

The other markers mentioned are:

14470 (in brackets for some reason), which I have spotted as marker for haplogroup X instead. It is possible that this old paper misidentified by S what is in fact X, which should be interesting too because no X has been spotted between Altai and North America, AFAIK.

clusteredmaps said...

The Authors named a new branch of M as haplogroup S which is entirely different from the Australian haplogroup N kinD.

Maju said...

That makes better sense. M8a maybe?