‘Mother Eve lived 200,000 yrs ago’
Mitochondrial Eve, the maternal ancestor to all living humans, most likely lived about 200,000-years-ago, a new study has claimed.
Researchers at the Rice University have conducted what they describe as the most “robust” statistical comparison of 10 human genetic models to confirm that the m
other of all living humans lived at the same time when modern humans are believed to have eme-rged. The study based on the analysis of mitochondrial DNA — found in the energy-producing centres of human cells — found that the genome is only passed down the maternal line, and can be traced back to one woman. However, they said, this doesn’t mean she was the first modern woman, rather it indicates that her descendants survive to the present day.
“There is always some other female that predated mitochondrial Eve, whose DNA didn’t make it up to modernity,” Professor Mar-ek Kimmel, lead author of the study, was quoted by LiveScience. “So the age of the mitochondrial Eve is always less than the age of the true, first female modern human.” As part of the three-year project, Kimmel and Krzysztof Cyran, a Polish researcher, compared the estimates produced by about 10 genetic models intended to determine when mitochondrial Eve lived.
Because the entire human genome has more than 20,000 genes and comparing the differences among them for distant relatives is a huge task, researchers us-ed mitochondrial genomes to find common ancestors.
—PTI
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