Hi All, For those of you who might consider DNA testing to aid in determining your ancestry, I'd like to share an interesting newspaper article that I read in the Feb. 28th New Jersey "Star Ledger." A 51 year old, former Rutgers University professor, Ms. Pearl Duncan had spent nine years and thousands of dollars trying to trace her ancestors from America to Jamaica, on back to Africa. Slaveholders left scant historical records of the origins of their slaves, so Ms. Duncan lacked scientific evidence connecting her family to Africa. But at long last, with the help of a University of Arizona geneticist, using samples of her father's DNA, the scientist helped prove that ancestors of Ms. Duncan lived in Ghana. Ms. Duncan's father had a patois nickname "Pari", which she felt probably came from the surname "Opare" used by the Akan people of southern Ghana. But she lacked hard evidence. So she launched a search for recent Ghanaian immigrants with the Opare surname near her home in New York. >From churches in Harlem and Flatbush, she found and persuaded 36 parishioners to submit DNA samples to the Arizona geneticist, hoping to find a match with her father's samples. What she found was astonishing. Of the 36 people, 30 were found to have a common ancestor with her father. Ms. Duncan says there is a strong physical resemblance between her own family and some of the African families whose DNA matched her father's samples, showing they shared a common ancestor some 400 years ago. As evidence she offers photos of herself and immigrant Vida Opare, a nurse and DNA "cousin" who "looks more like me than some of my sisters do," Duncan said (the article contains photos of Ms. Duncan and Ms. Opare, and it is absolutely stunning - they almost look like identical twins). Another DNA relative, Ghanaian engineering student Kwabena Kissiedo Mankure-Atiemo, closely resembles her nephew, David Burnett, a Tennessee engineering student. The article goes on to say: "Some companies are taking thousands of blood and saliva samples in order to build a vast DNA database. They hope to construct databases so comprehensive that, with a single sample of blood or a swab of the cells from inside a customer's cheek, they can link an individual to a relative across town or to an ancestor thousands of miles and centuries ago." The article mentions that one technique to test for relatedness is to search for at least 12 common genetic markers along the Y-chromosome, which is passed intact from father to son. Another common test compares genetic markers found in DNA within the mitochondria (remember all the press a few years ago about mitochondria and the two conflicting "Out of Africa" theories of anatomically-modern human migration?), which is inherited by all children from their biological mothers. One of the for-profit companies that does DNA testing is "Family Tree DNA" (see www.FamilyTreeDNA.com). I am not promoting the site; I know nothing about it other than the fact that it was mentioned in the article. The article says they charge from US $219 to $319 for tests. Particularly in Europe, more and more private firms are offering to perform DNA analysis for genealogy purposes. For $180, Oxford Ancestors (www.OxfordAncestors.com) headed by Bryan Sykes, a researcher from the Univeristy of Oxford in England, will test the DNA of people of European descent. "The for-profit firms are only part of a larger picture. Universities, anthropology groups and historical commissions are among those trying to establish DNA databases that will help determine origin and link ancestry." "In New York, the African Burial Ground Project is testing the remains of slaves buried in Lower Manhattan to provide a DNA comparison with modern Africans and African-Americans. In Washington D.C., African Ancestry Project researchers at Howard University are collecting blood samples throughout West Africa to trace the lineage of Americans. And in Utah, the Molecular Genealogy Project at Brigham Young University is attempting to build a database of 100,000 DNA samples from 500 population groups around the world." Kind Regards, Geoff Geoffrey Sherwood demidave@juno.com Towaco, NJ, USA ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj.