Jackie Boards' Environmental Science Blog: Mitochondrial Eve and DNA

Scientists and geneticists have all identified the maternal, common ancestor of all human beings around the world. This ancestor is a women and she is "Mitochondrial Eve". She lived around 200, 000 years ago as it is said. She is also said to have African origin and consequently all human beings can be traced back to Africa. The idea of this Mitochondrial eve came from the concept of mitochondrial DNA. Mitochondria is an energy producing organelle that has its own distinctive DNA. Each mitochondria with about 1,700 in every human cell includes an identical loop of DNA about 16,000 base pairs long containing 37 genes. However, mtDNA or mitochondrial DNA is passed on only along the maternal line. So, all of the mitochondrial DNA in a persons body is from his/ her mother and this process continues on.Furthermore,the mitochondrial DNA gets transfered from generation to generation without any recombination, which is way different from DNA in the nucleus.This allows DNA in the mitochondria to have a normal replication rate without random mutations.Therefore, the link between mitochondrial DNA and mitochondrial eve can be established because mtDNA is only transferred via the maternal line and mitochrondrial eve is a women. Mitochondrial Eve and mtDNA have both shown that there are many genetic similarities between human beings and we all can trace our lineage back to Africa no matter where we have migrated to or live in today.