(Cross posted to Azores, Madeira, and Island Routes lists) A project member had a question about mutations or differences and genetic distance on Y and mtDNA. Basically the question had to do with how Y-DNA mutates versus mtDNA.
Here's my analogy (complete with a Sao Miguel slant): You have a green banana and a green pineapple. In a couple of days, your banana is turning yellow. Give it a couple of more days, and it will start to freckle. That pineapple though? It's still green. It needs more like a couple of weeks for it to start to ripen. Y-DNA is the banana ripening. It ripens relatively quickly compared to the pineapple. Y-DNA has mutations that happen on a more frequent basis. Some might happen only in a couple of hundred of years. MtDNA is the pineapple ripening. It takes a looong time for it to ripen. The mtDNA mutations happen much, much less frequently. They mutate more on a period of every couple of THOUSANDS of years. So to have a perfect match on mtDNA and not find the common ancestor would not be unusual. It mutates sooooo slowly. It makes it more difficult to find matches. People want instant gratification so they don't test mtDNA. Therefore, the mtDNA portion of most of the Azores and Madeira DNA Projects is more in a census or survey mode. There's been a few mtDNA matches, but they have been on smaller Azorean islands. We are still working on building this up. As more and more people test, we will be able to figure out about half of our mtDNA matches - due to their nature of mutating so slowly. The other half may be so far back (thousands of years) that we may not be able to find it with the paper trail. Hope this analogy helps! Cheri Mello, Family Tree DNA Admin (volunteer) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Azores Genealogy" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to azores+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/azores.
