Importance of ancestral DNA ages

J. F. Y. Brookfield
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J. F. Y. Brookfield: University of Nottingham, Queens Medical Centre

Nature, 1997, vol. 388, issue 6638, 134-134

Abstract: Abstract Recent publications consider the age of a common ancestor of samples of human DNA sequences1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9. In particular, variation in Y chromosomes has been interpreted by different authors to give very different estimates of the time to the most recent common ancestor of the sample1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8. The cause of the differences is that the data are being interpreted by various authors in terms of their preferred models of human demography. The data are so lacking in power that these estimates depend hardly at all on the data, and almost entirely on the demographic model assumed. However, if we knew the demography of early humans, we would have no real interest in the time to the most recent common ancestor of an individual gene, as the time is important only because it tells us about the demography.

Date: 1997
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DOI: 10.1038/40543

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