Mitochondrial Eve
You thought we carried genes from both our parents, right? That’s only partially true. As most of us know, we have 23 pairs of chromosomes that are indeed the mix of genes from both our parents. Apart from that, as Siddhartha Mukherjee explains in his masterpiece, The Gene , there’s also the mitochondria within which each cell that has its own set of genes that has nothing in common with the rest of our genes! Further, the genes of the mitochondria come only from the mother . Now consider the full implication of this. Or if you can’t, let Mukherjee explain it for you. The genes in your mitochondria are identical to those in your mother, who in turn got them from her mother and so on… it’s only women all the way up the mitochondrial chain. Or to put it differently, a male is a dead end as far as the transmission of the mitochondria gene set is concerned. Now comes the best part: A world-wide survey (across races and countries) of the human mitochondrial DNA in 1987 yielded a ...