Josie,

At the risk of oversimplifying this whole thing, I'm posting a few
essential concepts about DNA. Please excuse me if I sound patronizing.

We all have heard that DNA is the blueprint of life.  And it is!  Or
to be more exact, each organism's DNA is its own blueprint of life. 
Just think how it is possible to clone an animal (make an exact
genetic replica) from the DNA found in the nucleus of a single cell. 
And notice that in theory a clone could be made from practically every
cell in the body, as most cells have a copy of all their DNA, their
full genome.

Although each cell with a nucleus has their full genome it only has a
small section of it activated, the specific section that contains the
instructions that each cell must carry out.  Imagine a huge theater
performance with many, many actors, where every actor has a copy of
the whole script but some actors only have to read a few lines or a
few pages at most.  So it is with cells; each one has differentiated
to play a

Hi Emilie:

Thanks for your msg.

 

I had has a great reading of

--- In ranchos@yahoogroups.com, "Arturo Ramos"  wrote:
>
> Gary is only focused on yDNA... paternal lines and his group is very 
> much focused on the "conquistadores" and Spanish lineages.
> 
> The mtDNA data for Mexico shows that most of the maternal genetic 
> material in modern Mexico is indigenous and given the demographic 
> collapse that occured shortly after contact with the Spanish, and the 
> subsequent movement of indigenous labor around the country, the mtDNA 
> information would draw a very different picture than the data Gary is 
> gathering.
> 
> We might be able to trace the ethnic groups of our indigenous 
> ancestors or at the very least learn about the migration patterns and 
> settlement waves that resulted in the indigenous population of Mexico.

Arturo, 

I asked Gary Felix to comment on your email. I think we all understand that the Americas, 
particularly Mexico and South America, are the mixing of three major cultures/races: 
European

I have uploaded an article into the files section of Ranchos2 that 
explores the relationship between genetics and Latin American 
(particularly Mexican) history.  It has some intersting data on mtDNA 
distributions among different ethinc groups in what is now the U.S. 
and Mexico.

Genetics and Latin American History.pdf

Surprisingly, the fact that we are all haplogroup A points to our 
maternal ancestors coming to the region after Spanish contact 
(probably from further south) since the groups indigenous to the area 
we are studying tend to have relatively high levels of haplogroup B 
populations.

The following is a link to a very well researched Spanish language 
article on the indigenous populations of the Colotlan/Bolanos area at 
the time of Spanish contact:

http://www.ejournal.unam.mx/historia_novo/ehn09/EHN00907.pdf



--- In ranchos@yahoogroups.com, "Josie T. Trevino"  
wrote:
>
> Hi!  
>  
> Someone once explained to me that the mtDNA results were, in some