Happy Mother’s Day Mitochondrial Eve

mitochondrial-eveBy Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor

This mother’s day, we can all express our gratitude and love for Mitochondrial Eve—the mother from whom we all descend. While we all cannot remember her from long ago we carry with us her lessons passed from her to each mother, who then did so to their children through all mothers of yesterday to all mothers today. Her words live in our Mitochondrial DNA; a part of our genetics that we all share.

Let us all toast this day the mothers of all our families and our common mom!

Mitochondrial DNA
Mitochondrial DNA

Mitochondrial Eve represents to geneticists the personification of the woman or women from whom all descend. She is the direct, unbroken, matrilineal most recent common ancestor to all currently living humans. She is believed to have lived 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. Since all human mitochondrial DNA is passed from mother to offspring without recombination, all mtDNA in every living person is from hers. The genetics differs only through mutation from successive generations but originates at her conception.

random-driftIt is believed she was born in East Africa. While she had contemporaries, it is theorized their descendants’ mtDNA suffered from drift which ended their respective lineage.

A mitochondrion is an organelle within much of our cells.

out-of-africa-mtdnaOur Mitochondrial Eve has the origin haplogroup L which begins branching to L0 then L1-6. From there each daughter haplogroup begins diversification to each descendant representing the myriad of human diversity of today.

Throughout history many have lost sight of the fact that we are each other’s brothers and sisters and that we share in ourselves a role in the human family. Let us this Mother’s Day give praise to our common mother–the mother of humanity.

peace-arch

Happy Mother’s Day Mitochondrial Eve

From your 10,976th Great Grandson, Darren “Haplogroup H2a2a” Smith

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28 thoughts on “Happy Mother’s Day Mitochondrial Eve”

  1. Darren Smith, it’s actually you that rocks! Okay my brother from a common mother, thank you. I’ll leave it to you to break it to Jonathan. Gotta go give you your creds on Twitter.

  2. The actual pillar Our Lord was scourged on, is housed at a Church in Rome in a large reliquary…the stone is marble that was mined and cut in Egypt, over 2,000 years ago. To look at this relic one is overwhelmed…tears don’t adequately express the feeling…it is a sober, somber event…I wish I had gone to the Church, whilst visiting in Rome with wifey. Basilica of St. Prassede houses this most holy of Christian relics. next time in Rome, I will spend time praying the rosary in this chapel, after mass at the basilica it is housed in.

  3. The dogpac was watching television this morning and there was a human up there on a stage and at a pedestal wearing a big collar and had a huge cross behind him. His version of where humans came from is different from the science discussed on this blog. He was telling us to worship the Holy Gosspull and pray for our sins. We dogs decided to blow this off and turned the channel to a movie which featured a dog named Lassie. We learned that humans can interact with each other and with dogs and enjoy life.

  4. Piltdown man baby!…Pierre Teilhard de Chardain….Primitive man…Robustus ooooooooh!

  5. A few decades ago, the celebrating the Pentecost was the 2nd known church function (only easter Sunday was celebrated more). Today, we have replaced the Pentecost with Mother’s day. I will be watching the series A.D. tonight at 8 CDT on channel 5. This TV series helps to inform our Christian and/or Jewish brethren why we need to continue celebrate the Pentecost.

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