
[[Image:MitochondrialEve.jpg|frame|right|An artist's impression of Mitochondrial Eve who probably lived in Africa, about 150,000 years ago.]] A comparison of the mitochondrial DNA of humans from many races and regions suggests that all of these DNA sequences have molecular evolution from a common ancestor sequence. Under the assumption that an individual inherits Mitochondrion only from one's mother, this finding implies that all living humans have a female line of descent from a woman whom researchers have dubbed Mitochondrial Eve. Based on the molecular clock technique of correlating elapsed time with observed genetic drift, Eve is believed to have lived about 150,000 years ago. Phylogeny suggests she lived in Africa. ==Importance of Eve== Although she was named after the Biblical Adam and Eve, mitochondrial Eve was not the sole living human female of her day. As many as 20,000 individuals of Eve's species may have lived at the same time as she, but only Eve produced an unbroken line of daughters that persists today. As a result, only Eve's mitochondria have descendants in the cell (biology) of living humans. Eve is the only female of her generation from whom all living people descend along their maternal lines. Mitochondrial Eve was the ''most recent'' mitochondrial ancestor of all living humans, but, of course, her mother, maternal grandmother, and so on were also the maternal-line ancestors of all living humans. The mitochondrial Eve for currently living humans was quite possibly not the same individual as the mitochondrial Eve for humans living thousands of years ago or thousands of years from now [http://computing.dcu.ie/~humphrys/FamTree/Royal/ca.html]. Note that Eve need not be our most recent common ancestor. However, because sexual reproduction shuffles the DNA of the chromosomes, the dating of a more recent common ancestor remains impossible to explore by current means. ==Chain of events== The surprising fact that no other all-female lines have survived from Eve's day is assumed to be an effect of chance rather than natural selection. A woman wins the title "Eve" retroactively through an exceptional streak of daughters: In each of her descendent generations there is a daughter who gives birth to another daughter. Only when the streaks of all other contenders are broken does Eve take possession of her title. As a result, the award is less than absolutely certain, because not every individual is tested for descent and among the billions on Earth a few stragglers from other maternal lines might well be out there. Essentially, the hypothesized process by which all lineages but one disappear is the same as the genetic drift of alleles. As is true for the "fixation" or supplantation of all other alleles under genetic drift, the process of matrilineal fixation is much slower and much less likely to reach completion in a large population than in a small population size. If Eve had lived among a million or a billion other females, it is very unlikely that the matrilineal ancestries of ''all'' humans alive today would converge on Eve (or any one contemporary of Eve's). Why might the community of Eve's peers have been so small? One possibility is that the world population of humans in Eve's day passed through a population bottleneck. Another is that Eve lived in a subpopulation of humans that came to supplant all others. A still more extreme version of this latter scenario is that Eve lived shortly after whatever isolating event caused the speciation of anatomically modern humans (''Homo sapiens''). Of ''Homo sapiens'' remains discovered so far, in fact, the oldest that match the bones of living humans date from around the time that Eve lived. ==Relation to Adam== On the other hand, there was a most recent man, "Y-chromosomal Adam," who fathered an unbroken line of males that are forebears of all the men on earth. Y-chromosomal Adam appears to have lived only about half as long ago as Eve. This means that another bottleneck, besides the one surrounding Eve, affected the human lineage after her. The fact that the bottleneck in Adam's day appears not to have produced also a matrilineal ancestor of all living humans — a more recent Eve, in other words — illustrates that the branching and disappearance of lineages depends on chance (alternatively, male lineages may dwindle faster, perhaps due to a history of polygamy, which would have allowed only a portion of males to produce offspring). Some researchers say evidence of this second bottleneck exists also in the mitochondrial DNA data. It is also possible that the mismatched dates of Eve and Adam may illustrate the imperfectness of the molecular clock technique, which continues to undergo revisions. ==Challenges to the theory== A recent challenge to the Eve theory has been the observation that the mitochondria of sperm are sometimes passed to offspring. Still other evidence suggests that sperm and egg mitochondrial DNA may recombination, or swap pieces of sequence with each other. So mitochondria may not be so pure a matrilineal marker as they were supposed when the theory was advanced. Depending on how frequently paternal inheritance and recombination occurred, as well as when they occurred, it may be that no Eve even existed. But scientists still disagree on whether these processes do occur, and if they do, whether they occur frequently enough to rule out an Eve. ==Eve and the Out-of-Africa theory== Mitochondrial Eve is sometimes referred to as African Eve, an ancestor who has been hypothesized on the grounds of fossil as well as DNA evidence. According to the most common interpretation of the mitochondrial DNA data, the titles belong to the same hypothetical woman. Family trees (or "phylogenies") constructed on the basis of mitochondrial DNA comparisons show that the living humans whose mitochondrial lineages branched earliest from the tree are indigenous Africans, whereas the lineages of indigenous peoples on other continents all branch off from African lines. Researchers therefore reason that all living humans descend from Africans, some of whom migrated out of Africa to populate the rest of the world. If the mitochondrial analysis is correct, then because mitochondrial Eve represents the root of the mitochondrial family tree, she must have predated the exodus and lived in Africa. Therefore many researchers take the mitochondrial evidence as support for the "single-origin" or single-origin hypothesis. The construction of family trees from DNA data is an inexact science, however. Critics of the "African genesis" model argue that the mitochondrial evidence can be explained as well or better by trees that associate Eve most closely to the indigenous peoples of Asia. As of 2003, however, following advances in computing power and in methods of tree determination, these criticisms have diminished. In any event, the strongest support that mitochondrial DNA offers for the African-origin hypothesis may not depend on trees. One finding not subject to interpretation is that the greatest diversity of mitochondrial DNA sequences exists among Africans. This diversity would not have accumulated, researchers argue, if humans had not been living longer in Africa than anywhere else. Analysis of Y chromosome sequences have corroborated the evidence that mitochondrial DNA has provided for an African origin for hominids. ==More recent common ancestors== Other more recent common ancestors likely have contributed various genes that reside on the linear Cell nucleus DNA. For example, some ''more recent'' common ancestor might have contributed a gene that specifies one of the RNA subunits in the ribosomes. However, because sexual reproduction shuffles the nuclear DNA of chromosomes contributed by the two parents, a ''more recent'' common ancestor than Eve remains difficult to identify by current means. ==See also== * Human evolution * Neutral theory of molecular evolution * Mitochondrial genome *Most recent common ancestor * Single origin hypothesis * Y-chromosomal Adam * Y-chromosomal Aaron * Genetic genealogy ==Further reading== *Cann, R.L., Stoneking, M., and Wilson, A.C., 1987, Mitochondrial DNA and human evolution, ''Nature'' 325; pp 31–36 * Bryan Sykes The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry, W.W. Norton, 2001, hardcover, 306 pages,ISBN 0-393-02018-5 * Spencer Wells The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey, Princeton University Press, January 2003, hardcover, 246 pages,ISBN 0-691-11532-X == External links and references == * [http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/mitoeve.html Krishna Kunchithapadam, "What if anything is a Mitochondrial Eve?"]: a simple explanation *[http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A703199 BBC2's explanation] of "one of the most poorly understood scientific ideas of the 20th century" * Kaessmann, H., and Pääbo, S.: [http://www.eva.mpg.de/genetics/files/Kaessmann2002.pdf The genetical history of humans and the great apes]. Journal of Internal Medicine 251: 1–18 (2002). * [http://www.eva.mpg.de/genetics/files/team_paabo.html Papers by Svante Pääbo and coworkers] * [http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/278/5339/804 Science, Volume 278, Number 5339, Issue of 31 Oct 1997, pp. 804–805] * Discovery Channel's [http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/realeve/realeve.html The Real Eve] ----- The Japan horror film and novel ''Parasite Eve'' uses the Mitochondrial Eve theory as the basis for a fantasy about a scientist resurrecting his wife by regeneration (biology) her liver cells, with disastrous effects. Human evolution
==Question== Suppose 100 women lived concurrently with mitochondrial Eve. What if all of us (humans) are descended from several, or all, of these 100 women ? Then they're all our ancestors, and this becomes easier to understand -- it is a simple bottleneck; we're all descended from the people who were alive then. Is this idea ruled out by current knowledge ? ::But the "tags" that are formed by the genetic variation in the mitochondria that we all share show that, before those 100 ancestors you're thinking of, we all happen to be descended from one female. She was not the only woman alive in her time of course, just the only one who gave rise to a line of female descendents who didn't die out, line by line. For a male version, compare the genealogy of a house, like Nassau, that eventually didn't have any male descendents. Question: ''"one woman—possibly one pre-human woman—"'' a "pre-human" just 100,000 years ago? This bit has been inserted by a fan of Carleton S. Coon I suppose. A last-ditch attempt! Any way to remove it without stirring up a lot of anger?... User:Wetman 05:48, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC) --- Sorry for the stupid question, but isn't it a bit unlikely that there should have been such an incredibly narrow bottleneck of only one female? I mean, one thousand or one hundred would sound OK, but exactly 1? If we take this mitochondrial similarity stuff as a scientific puzzle, does this sound as a plausible explanation? By the way, does this not involve a terrible amount of inbreeding? --User:Tamas 09:14, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC) ''Tamas, species doesn't evolve, but individual organisms do. There is no way for the entire human race to evolve collectively. Every new step in evolution starts with one organism. -FredrikM'' :: Species don't evolve? So every species is intact since they arrived, and they all converge on one ancestor of their own? - User:Jerryseinfeld 11:26, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC) :Is it not possible - at least theoretically- that two or more organisms of a species start to evolve at the same time in the same direction by coincidence? (or because they face the same challenges etc)--User:Tamas 11:40, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC) ::Yes, but the chances of that would be insanely low User:Gracefool 02:13, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC) ----- Shouldn't the picture show someone that is much darker skinned? That was always the impression I got when reading on this subject. Also is there any mention of the non-mitichondrial contribution of other contemporaries of Eve to modern humans. Just because the mitochondria came from Eve doesn't mean the entire genetic make-up of all her descendants is solely hers. User:Rmhermen 13:24, Jul 28, 2004 (UTC) == quibbles == The picture isn't great, 150,000 years ago and decorating herself with jewellery. She looks more like a neolithic Asian. Also there should be some mention that Mitochondrial Eve is not our only, or even a particularly recent common ancestor. User:Zeimusu 14:52, 2004 Jul 28 (UTC) :I'm in agreement. How did this get to featured article standard? It is useful to have stuff on evolution. I did an emergency save of the , indicated the picture was an artists impression, and changed family tree (based on birth death and marriage records in history) to phylogeny (based on DNA sequences), and noted that there was a population rather than a single foundress. I think the present article is up to standard now. User:Duncharris|User talk:duncharris 18:08, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC) == Statistics section == The "Statistics" subsection of the "Challenges to the theory" section seems rather out of place and inadequate for its purpose. First, it isn't a challenge; it's support for the theory based on probability. Second, it asserts that the predicted outcome is "inevitable", making a statement about "a side effect of the dynamics of the system", but doesn't really explain this. (Oh, and "bound to happen inevitably" is redundant.) Third, the phrase "Think about it", as if a moment's thought about complex probability calculations without actual documentation — usually the province of mathematicians — could be expected of the average reader of an evolutionary theory article. But the worst part is the "Think about it" phrase, followed by an analogy that assumes quite a bit about readers' facility with probability theory. For this analogy to produce results analogous to the "mitochondrial Eve" theory, it appears (to me, at least) that after many generations, we should expect that all the counters would have the same color of only one of the original triangular (female) counters, just by random selection. (The text doesn't state this conclusion; it assumes the reader finds this final state obvious.) "Common sense" might very well lead one to expect that most of the colors would be reproduced into further generations. (It's a race between the expansion of the population, which increases the number of random picks per generation, and the loss of colors in each successive generation, based on the small but finite probability of any given color not being selected in that generation.) Of course, common sense is an unreliable guidepost in probability, which often produces results that defy intuition, but that's exactly why such a terse example provides no real illustration of the point. We need a better illustration, it should go in an appropriate location, and it shouldn't assume probability knowledge that isn't intuitive to anyone but mathematicians. — User:Jeffq 09:27, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC) :I concur. It is misplaced and poorly explained. I was of half a mind to just delete it, but a discussion is probably more appropriate. User:Noisy 11:06, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC) ::I agree and have deleted it. It was all factually correct (a truism even) except for the conclusion "it's not evidence for a single Eve". As Jeff Q said, it actually supported the theory. User:Nurg 07:32, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC) :::I'm sorry to see it go completely, as I think it's an interesting and relevant point — just not where it was. I was playing with a simulation script that would illustrate the point made, but I hadn't figured out how to make it available for curious readers, nor have I had much bandwidth to devote to it. It still would have needed rewriting, too. Oh, well. — User:Jeffq 03:06, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC) == Planning a fix to a wrong statement in Mitochondrial Eve == Just a note. I don't have a clear idea yet how to make a clean fix to the following broken sentence in the Mitochondrial Eve page: "But only Eve produced an unbroken line of daughters that persists today." The statement is wrong and misleading. But most importantly that sentence misses an opportunity to make a clear and insightful statement about how Eve relates to the reader. To see what is wrong and misleading about that statement consider the following counter-example. "There are necessarily at least ''two'' people who produced an unbroken line of daughters that persists today. For 1) Eve and 2) at least one man with whom she conceived a daughter produced an unbroken line of daughters that persists today." Furthermore, consider the following counter-example. "Eve's mother in addition to Eve produced an unbroken line of daughters that persists today." In fact, the empirical evidence suggests that each and every mother of the mother of the mother . . . of the mother in the unbroken line of mothers of Eve also "produced an unbroken line of daughters that persists today." I don't have a fix for the broken statement yet, but I am thinking along the following lines. "Every person alive today has an unbroken maternal line of mothers reaching back into prehistory. However, the maternal lines of all living persons converge on Eve. And since every person has only one mother, in the generations before Eve, all persons alive today have the same unbroken maternal line of mothers, back to a mother that looked like a chimpanzee, back to a mother that looked like a [http://medicine.ucsd.edu/cpa/tupaiasm/Tupaia01.jpg tree shrew], and beyond." ---User:Rednblu 20:47, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC) --- ::"Mitochonrial Eve" is merely the most ''recent'' common ancestor of us all. Of course we are all descended in the female line from primitive primates, and from Late Permian eucynodonts. However, since mitochondria are passed down through the female line, we can make no useful statements about the mates of "Mitochondrial Eve". Other females were alive at the time, but their genetic lines died out, by the luck of the draw: "only Eve produced an unbroken line of daughters that persists today." Lots of illuminating links are on the Web. Why not track down the best of them and link them here? As a general rule, it's best to grasp the concept, ''then'' make the edits. User:Wetman 21:06, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC) --- ''<>''
No. That is simply not true. Many other females in Eve's generation passed their genetic lines to people alive today through 1) other than mitochondrial DNA and through 2) great-great-...-grandsons as well as great-great-...-granddaughters.
By the way, check out our friend Pedro II of Brazil. :)) ---User:Rednblu 23:09, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)
---
== mitochondrial Eve ==
Was "mitochondrial Eve" neanderthal?
Please email: igigzechnas@msn.com
---
:No.
:Six of the different Neanderthal remains found by 2004 had enough mitochondrial DNA left in them that analysts could calculate how far back the living humans had a great-great--...grandmother in common with the six different Neanderthals. [http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/mtDNA.html]
:The results of the DNA study comparing analyzed living humans and analyzed Neanderthal remains showed the following.
** The last mitochondrial ancestor of the analyzed living humans was 150,000 years ago; she would be the Mitochondrial Eve.
** The last mitochondrial ancestor among the analyzed Neanderthal remains was 200,000 years ago; she would be the Neanderthal Mitochondrial Eve. Neanderthal Mitochondrial Eve was a totally different creature from the Human Mitochondrial Eve, though they had a distant common maternal ancestor from whom they both inherited their mitochondrial DNA.
** The last common mitochondrial ancestor of both Neanderthals and humans lived 500,000 years ago; she would be the last common maternal ancestor of Human Mitochondrial Eve and Neanderthal Mitochondrial Eve. ---User:Rednblu 00:02, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)
== Surprising Fact? ==
In the "Chain of Events" section: ''<>''
Is this really a surprising fact? It would be surprising if we randomly chose a single individual out of all who have lived and THEN discovered that by coincidence this individual was the most recent common female-line ancestor of all living humans...that would be surprising.
What is not surprising at all is that there must have existed just such an individual. If you can determine that we are all descended from some group of humans of size X then you simply perform the operation again and find the common ancestor of THAT group. By definition you will eventually find the individual who is the most recent common female-line (or male line for that matter) ancestor of everyone currently alive.
The reason that "mitochondrial eve" is interesting is simply because due to the way mitochondrial DNA works we can make an estimate of WHEN the most recent common female-line ancestor lived. There was also a most recent common male-line ancestor but we have no way of tracing the male line and estimating when he lived.
Am I right about this?
User:Peeter 18:34, 03 Sep 2004 (UTC)
---
:Did you consider Y-chromosomal Adam? ---User:Rednblu 22:03, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)
---
:No, you're right, I hadn't considered Y-chromosonal Adam. So, I should amend my earlier statement to say that we may have a way of assessing when our most recent patrilineal male ancestor lived.
:But my main point still stands: There is nothing "surprising" about Mitochondrial Eve being our most recent common matrilineal ancestor simply because "The most recent common matrilineal ancestor of all people alive today" is the ''definition'' of "Mitochondrial Eve". See [http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/mitoeve.html] ---User:Peeter 01:58, 04 Sep 2004 (UTC)
:: You're right--what's surprising is how recently she lived, not that such a person existed. The way to see this is to work backwards.
::Consider the set of all women living today who don't have daughters of their own--call them "the daughters". Now go back one generation and call that group "the mothers". Every daughter has a mother, but some mothers have more than one daughter, so the number of mothers is less than the number of daughters. Go back another generation, to "the grandmothers". Again some grandmothers gave birth to more than one mother, so the number of grandmothers is less than the number of mothers. In general, we see that the number of members of generation ''N''+1 must be ≤ the number of members of generation ''N''. Therefore, if we go back far enough, we come to a generation with only one member--and that's "Eve".
::What ''is'' surprising is that she lived only 150k years ago, which makes her human, rather than some earlier primate, or reptile, or fish.
::User:Wwoods 20:19, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)
==Elaborate==
Is it possible to add more precise data and examples to this article? For example, if 100 women had 100% identical mtDNA could they not all be the mothers of future generations? How does it come to be only one person?
How does this one person theory work? 100 women turn into 100,000 women, then every one of those 100,000 descending from 99 of the original women die, and those surviving turn into 6,391,567,079 descending from the one from the first 100?
Do the other Hominids converge on "one" ancestor? Does every species converge on "one" ancestor?
Thanks - User:Jerryseinfeld 10:05, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)
You need DNA evidence to look for an Eve or Adam and we barely have fossil evidence for other hominids, so that question is unanswerable. A species need not have an Eve or an Adam. If species lived forever, then if you wait enough generations under conditions of a constant population size, then I think some woman and some man from the past is bound to become an Eve or Adam as the longest streaks of same-sex successions from other men and woman are broken.
== Timescale ==
It says: "Based on the molecular clock technique of correlating elapsed time with observed genetic drift, Eve is believed to have lived about 150,000 years ago (148,000 BC)."
Does't "''about'' 150,000 years ago" mean 150,000 BC rather than 148,000 BC? User:Salleman 12:36, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
:"About" 150,000 years ago means "about" 148,000 Common Era, since you do have to account for the (about-) 2000 years of the Common Era. 2,000 minus 150,000 equals -148,000 -- User:Vystrix Nexoth 14:40, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)
#REDIRECT Mitochondrial Eve
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Mitochondrial Eve
[[Image:MitochondrialEve.jpg|frame|right|An artist's impression of Mitochondrial Eve who probably lived in Africa, about 150,000 years ago.]] A comparison of the mitochondrial DNA of humans from many races and regions suggests that all of these DNA sequences have molecular evolution from a common ancestor sequence. Under the assumption that an individual inherits Mitochondrion only from one's mother, this finding implies that all living humans have a female line of descent from a woman whom researchers have dubbed Mitochondrial Eve. Based on the molecular clock technique of correlating elapsed time with observed genetic drift, Eve is believed to have lived about 150,000 years ago. Phylogeny suggests she lived in Africa. ==Importance of Eve== Although she was named after the Biblical Adam and Eve, mitochondrial Eve was not the sole living human female of her day. As many as 20,000 individuals of Eve's species may have lived at the same time as she, but only Eve produced an unbroken line of daughters that persists today. As a result, only Eve's mitochondria have descendants in the cell (biology) of living humans. Eve is the only female of her generation from whom all living people descend along their maternal lines. Mitochondrial Eve was the ''most recent'' mitochondrial ancestor of all living humans, but, of course, her mother, maternal grandmother, and so on were also the maternal-line ancestors of all living humans. The mitochondrial Eve for currently living humans was quite possibly not the same individual as the mitochondrial Eve for humans living thousands of years ago or thousands of years from now [http://computing.dcu.ie/~humphrys/FamTree/Royal/ca.html]. Note that Eve need not be our most recent common ancestor. However, because sexual reproduction shuffles the DNA of the chromosomes, the dating of a more recent common ancestor remains impossible to explore by current means. ==Chain of events== The surprising fact that no other all-female lines have survived from Eve's day is assumed to be an effect of chance rather than natural selection. A woman wins the title "Eve" retroactively through an exceptional streak of daughters: In each of her descendent generations there is a daughter who gives birth to another daughter. Only when the streaks of all other contenders are broken does Eve take possession of her title. As a result, the award is less than absolutely certain, because not every individual is tested for descent and among the billions on Earth a few stragglers from other maternal lines might well be out there. Essentially, the hypothesized process by which all lineages but one disappear is the same as the genetic drift of alleles. As is true for the "fixation" or supplantation of all other alleles under genetic drift, the process of matrilineal fixation is much slower and much less likely to reach completion in a large population than in a small population size. If Eve had lived among a million or a billion other females, it is very unlikely that the matrilineal ancestries of ''all'' humans alive today would converge on Eve (or any one contemporary of Eve's). Why might the community of Eve's peers have been so small? One possibility is that the world population of humans in Eve's day passed through a population bottleneck. Another is that Eve lived in a subpopulation of humans that came to supplant all others. A still more extreme version of this latter scenario is that Eve lived shortly after whatever isolating event caused the speciation of anatomically modern humans (''Homo sapiens''). Of ''Homo sapiens'' remains discovered so far, in fact, the oldest that match the bones of living humans date from around the time that Eve lived. ==Relation to Adam== On the other hand, there was a most recent man, "Y-chromosomal Adam," who fathered an unbroken line of males that are forebears of all the men on earth. Y-chromosomal Adam appears to have lived only about half as long ago as Eve. This means that another bottleneck, besides the one surrounding Eve, affected the human lineage after her. The fact that the bottleneck in Adam's day appears not to have produced also a matrilineal ancestor of all living humans — a more recent Eve, in other words — illustrates that the branching and disappearance of lineages depends on chance (alternatively, male lineages may dwindle faster, perhaps due to a history of polygamy, which would have allowed only a portion of males to produce offspring). Some researchers say evidence of this second bottleneck exists also in the mitochondrial DNA data. It is also possible that the mismatched dates of Eve and Adam may illustrate the imperfectness of the molecular clock technique, which continues to undergo revisions. ==Challenges to the theory== A recent challenge to the Eve theory has been the observation that the mitochondria of sperm are sometimes passed to offspring. Still other evidence suggests that sperm and egg mitochondrial DNA may recombination, or swap pieces of sequence with each other. So mitochondria may not be so pure a matrilineal marker as they were supposed when the theory was advanced. Depending on how frequently paternal inheritance and recombination occurred, as well as when they occurred, it may be that no Eve even existed. But scientists still disagree on whether these processes do occur, and if they do, whether they occur frequently enough to rule out an Eve. ==Eve and the Out-of-Africa theory== Mitochondrial Eve is sometimes referred to as African Eve, an ancestor who has been hypothesized on the grounds of fossil as well as DNA evidence. According to the most common interpretation of the mitochondrial DNA data, the titles belong to the same hypothetical woman. Family trees (or "phylogenies") constructed on the basis of mitochondrial DNA comparisons show that the living humans whose mitochondrial lineages branched earliest from the tree are indigenous Africans, whereas the lineages of indigenous peoples on other continents all branch off from African lines. Researchers therefore reason that all living humans descend from Africans, some of whom migrated out of Africa to populate the rest of the world. If the mitochondrial analysis is correct, then because mitochondrial Eve represents the root of the mitochondrial family tree, she must have predated the exodus and lived in Africa. Therefore many researchers take the mitochondrial evidence as support for the "single-origin" or single-origin hypothesis. The construction of family trees from DNA data is an inexact science, however. Critics of the "African genesis" model argue that the mitochondrial evidence can be explained as well or better by trees that associate Eve most closely to the indigenous peoples of Asia. As of 2003, however, following advances in computing power and in methods of tree determination, these criticisms have diminished. In any event, the strongest support that mitochondrial DNA offers for the African-origin hypothesis may not depend on trees. One finding not subject to interpretation is that the greatest diversity of mitochondrial DNA sequences exists among Africans. This diversity would not have accumulated, researchers argue, if humans had not been living longer in Africa than anywhere else. Analysis of Y chromosome sequences have corroborated the evidence that mitochondrial DNA has provided for an African origin for hominids. ==More recent common ancestors== Other more recent common ancestors likely have contributed various genes that reside on the linear Cell nucleus DNA. For example, some ''more recent'' common ancestor might have contributed a gene that specifies one of the RNA subunits in the ribosomes. However, because sexual reproduction shuffles the nuclear DNA of chromosomes contributed by the two parents, a ''more recent'' common ancestor than Eve remains difficult to identify by current means. ==See also== * Human evolution * Neutral theory of molecular evolution * Mitochondrial genome *Most recent common ancestor * Single origin hypothesis * Y-chromosomal Adam * Y-chromosomal Aaron * Genetic genealogy ==Further reading== *Cann, R.L., Stoneking, M., and Wilson, A.C., 1987, Mitochondrial DNA and human evolution, ''Nature'' 325; pp 31–36 * Bryan Sykes The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry, W.W. Norton, 2001, hardcover, 306 pages,ISBN 0-393-02018-5 * Spencer Wells The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey, Princeton University Press, January 2003, hardcover, 246 pages,ISBN 0-691-11532-X == External links and references == * [http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/mitoeve.html Krishna Kunchithapadam, "What if anything is a Mitochondrial Eve?"]: a simple explanation *[http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A703199 BBC2's explanation] of "one of the most poorly understood scientific ideas of the 20th century" * Kaessmann, H., and Pääbo, S.: [http://www.eva.mpg.de/genetics/files/Kaessmann2002.pdf The genetical history of humans and the great apes]. Journal of Internal Medicine 251: 1–18 (2002). * [http://www.eva.mpg.de/genetics/files/team_paabo.html Papers by Svante Pääbo and coworkers] * [http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/278/5339/804 Science, Volume 278, Number 5339, Issue of 31 Oct 1997, pp. 804–805] * Discovery Channel's [http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/realeve/realeve.html The Real Eve] ----- The Japan horror film and novel ''Parasite Eve'' uses the Mitochondrial Eve theory as the basis for a fantasy about a scientist resurrecting his wife by regeneration (biology) her liver cells, with disastrous effects. Human evolution
Mitochondrial Eve
==Question== Suppose 100 women lived concurrently with mitochondrial Eve. What if all of us (humans) are descended from several, or all, of these 100 women ? Then they're all our ancestors, and this becomes easier to understand -- it is a simple bottleneck; we're all descended from the people who were alive then. Is this idea ruled out by current knowledge ? ::But the "tags" that are formed by the genetic variation in the mitochondria that we all share show that, before those 100 ancestors you're thinking of, we all happen to be descended from one female. She was not the only woman alive in her time of course, just the only one who gave rise to a line of female descendents who didn't die out, line by line. For a male version, compare the genealogy of a house, like Nassau, that eventually didn't have any male descendents. Question: ''"one woman—possibly one pre-human woman—"'' a "pre-human" just 100,000 years ago? This bit has been inserted by a fan of Carleton S. Coon I suppose. A last-ditch attempt! Any way to remove it without stirring up a lot of anger?... User:Wetman 05:48, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC) --- Sorry for the stupid question, but isn't it a bit unlikely that there should have been such an incredibly narrow bottleneck of only one female? I mean, one thousand or one hundred would sound OK, but exactly 1? If we take this mitochondrial similarity stuff as a scientific puzzle, does this sound as a plausible explanation? By the way, does this not involve a terrible amount of inbreeding? --User:Tamas 09:14, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC) ''Tamas, species doesn't evolve, but individual organisms do. There is no way for the entire human race to evolve collectively. Every new step in evolution starts with one organism. -FredrikM'' :: Species don't evolve? So every species is intact since they arrived, and they all converge on one ancestor of their own? - User:Jerryseinfeld 11:26, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC) :Is it not possible - at least theoretically- that two or more organisms of a species start to evolve at the same time in the same direction by coincidence? (or because they face the same challenges etc)--User:Tamas 11:40, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC) ::Yes, but the chances of that would be insanely low User:Gracefool 02:13, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC) ----- Shouldn't the picture show someone that is much darker skinned? That was always the impression I got when reading on this subject. Also is there any mention of the non-mitichondrial contribution of other contemporaries of Eve to modern humans. Just because the mitochondria came from Eve doesn't mean the entire genetic make-up of all her descendants is solely hers. User:Rmhermen 13:24, Jul 28, 2004 (UTC) == quibbles == The picture isn't great, 150,000 years ago and decorating herself with jewellery. She looks more like a neolithic Asian. Also there should be some mention that Mitochondrial Eve is not our only, or even a particularly recent common ancestor. User:Zeimusu 14:52, 2004 Jul 28 (UTC) :I'm in agreement. How did this get to featured article standard? It is useful to have stuff on evolution. I did an emergency save of the , indicated the picture was an artists impression, and changed family tree (based on birth death and marriage records in history) to phylogeny (based on DNA sequences), and noted that there was a population rather than a single foundress. I think the present article is up to standard now. User:Duncharris|User talk:duncharris 18:08, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC) == Statistics section == The "Statistics" subsection of the "Challenges to the theory" section seems rather out of place and inadequate for its purpose. First, it isn't a challenge; it's support for the theory based on probability. Second, it asserts that the predicted outcome is "inevitable", making a statement about "a side effect of the dynamics of the system", but doesn't really explain this. (Oh, and "bound to happen inevitably" is redundant.) Third, the phrase "Think about it", as if a moment's thought about complex probability calculations without actual documentation — usually the province of mathematicians — could be expected of the average reader of an evolutionary theory article. But the worst part is the "Think about it" phrase, followed by an analogy that assumes quite a bit about readers' facility with probability theory. For this analogy to produce results analogous to the "mitochondrial Eve" theory, it appears (to me, at least) that after many generations, we should expect that all the counters would have the same color of only one of the original triangular (female) counters, just by random selection. (The text doesn't state this conclusion; it assumes the reader finds this final state obvious.) "Common sense" might very well lead one to expect that most of the colors would be reproduced into further generations. (It's a race between the expansion of the population, which increases the number of random picks per generation, and the loss of colors in each successive generation, based on the small but finite probability of any given color not being selected in that generation.) Of course, common sense is an unreliable guidepost in probability, which often produces results that defy intuition, but that's exactly why such a terse example provides no real illustration of the point. We need a better illustration, it should go in an appropriate location, and it shouldn't assume probability knowledge that isn't intuitive to anyone but mathematicians. — User:Jeffq 09:27, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC) :I concur. It is misplaced and poorly explained. I was of half a mind to just delete it, but a discussion is probably more appropriate. User:Noisy 11:06, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC) ::I agree and have deleted it. It was all factually correct (a truism even) except for the conclusion "it's not evidence for a single Eve". As Jeff Q said, it actually supported the theory. User:Nurg 07:32, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC) :::I'm sorry to see it go completely, as I think it's an interesting and relevant point — just not where it was. I was playing with a simulation script that would illustrate the point made, but I hadn't figured out how to make it available for curious readers, nor have I had much bandwidth to devote to it. It still would have needed rewriting, too. Oh, well. — User:Jeffq 03:06, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC) == Planning a fix to a wrong statement in Mitochondrial Eve == Just a note. I don't have a clear idea yet how to make a clean fix to the following broken sentence in the Mitochondrial Eve page: "But only Eve produced an unbroken line of daughters that persists today." The statement is wrong and misleading. But most importantly that sentence misses an opportunity to make a clear and insightful statement about how Eve relates to the reader. To see what is wrong and misleading about that statement consider the following counter-example. "There are necessarily at least ''two'' people who produced an unbroken line of daughters that persists today. For 1) Eve and 2) at least one man with whom she conceived a daughter produced an unbroken line of daughters that persists today." Furthermore, consider the following counter-example. "Eve's mother in addition to Eve produced an unbroken line of daughters that persists today." In fact, the empirical evidence suggests that each and every mother of the mother of the mother . . . of the mother in the unbroken line of mothers of Eve also "produced an unbroken line of daughters that persists today." I don't have a fix for the broken statement yet, but I am thinking along the following lines. "Every person alive today has an unbroken maternal line of mothers reaching back into prehistory. However, the maternal lines of all living persons converge on Eve. And since every person has only one mother, in the generations before Eve, all persons alive today have the same unbroken maternal line of mothers, back to a mother that looked like a chimpanzee, back to a mother that looked like a [http://medicine.ucsd.edu/cpa/tupaiasm/Tupaia01.jpg tree shrew], and beyond." ---User:Rednblu 20:47, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC) --- ::"Mitochonrial Eve" is merely the most ''recent'' common ancestor of us all. Of course we are all descended in the female line from primitive primates, and from Late Permian eucynodonts. However, since mitochondria are passed down through the female line, we can make no useful statements about the mates of "Mitochondrial Eve". Other females were alive at the time, but their genetic lines died out, by the luck of the draw: "only Eve produced an unbroken line of daughters that persists today." Lots of illuminating links are on the Web. Why not track down the best of them and link them here? As a general rule, it's best to grasp the concept, ''then'' make the edits. User:Wetman 21:06, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC) --- ''<
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