Research finds links between DNA and surnames
Wednesday, 08 Oct 2008 15:25
Men with the same British surname are "highly likely" to be genetically linked
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Scientists have found that men with the same British surname are highly likely to be genetically linked.
For her PhD research, Turi King, from the University of Leicester, recruited over 2,500 men bearing over 500 different surnames looking at the link between names and Y chromosomes.
"In Britain, surnames are passed down from father to son. A piece of our DNA, the Y chromosome, is the one part of our genetic material that confers maleness and is passed, like surnames, from father to son. Therefore, a link could exist between a man's surname and the type of Y chromosome he carries," Dr King will say when she presents her findings today.
Her research found that between two men who share the same surname there is a 24 per cent chance of sharing a common ancestor through that name but that this increases to nearly 50 per cent if the surname they have is rare.
The research also looked at 40 surnames in depth, recruiting many different men all bearing the same surname, making sure that known relatives were excluded.
For surnames such as Attenborough and Swindlehurst over 70 per cent of the men shared the same or near identical Y chromosome types whereas surnames such as Revis, Wadsworth and Jefferson show more than one group of men sharing common ancestry but unrelated to other groups.
Dr King claims her results have a potential use in forensic science, since they suggest that, given large databases of names and Y chromosome profiles, surname prediction from DNA alone may be feasible.