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mtDNA Genealogy Testing - HVR-1 and HVR-2
When you are doing mitochondria DNA testing, you aren't testing the *entire* DNA. That would be huge! You are only testing little, defined chunks that researchers know about.
The HVR-1 region stands for the Hyper Variable Segment region. It is a region of the mitochondria DNA that researchers have pinpointed as being easy to track and having changed over time. By looking at your HVR-1 region scientists can determine what "haplotype" you are - i.e. what region of the world your ancestors first came from.
These mtDNA lines are ONLY passed from mother to daughter along the mother line, so you are just tracking that one line back in history. There is no mingling of the DNA from the father's side. Sperm do not carry the mtDNA. The mtDNA changes VERY slowly so while it can determine common ancestors, often those common ancestors are 30 or more generations back!
As a general rule of thumb, a mtDNA match can mean you have a common mother anywhere from 1 to 50 generations back (up to 1,000 years or more!) We're talking long term migrations here. If you go for both the HVR-1 and HVR-2 regions, and they match, it gives you a narrower window to work with - somewhere around 30 generations or less, usually.
If you are trying to show that two people had a common mother sometime within recent history (like 1500-2000, which is 500 years, i.e. maybe 20 generations) it would be good to get both the HVR-1 and HVR-2 tests done. That way if BOTH of them match up perfectly, you have a good sense that it is really the ancestor in question that is the common mother. Otherwise it could be some random person back in the year 999 that started this "group" off, giving her mtDNA genes to all of her female children on down the line.
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Note - Lisa Shea wrote this content for the genealogy site at BellaOnline.com - you might still find this content there as well. That's fine :) I gave permission!
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