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DNA reveals how the chicken crossed the sea

Ancient Polynesians may have brought birds to the Americas.

The discovery of chicken bones with Polynesian DNA at an archaeological site in Chile has added hard, physical evidence to the controversial theory that ancient seafarers from the south Pacific visited the New World long before Columbus.

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Posted by Oliver Morton on June 05, 2007
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" Mitochondrial DNA doesn't mutate much and so is useful for tracing evolutionary lines. " Okay I'm all for dumbing down the science but that statement's not really true is it? Mitochondrial DNA mutates MORE frequently than nuclear DNA, but it is only transmitted by one parent. That is why it is useful for tracking lineages over a few tens to hundreds of generations. Mutations show up fairly quickly once lineages branch off from each other, and the differences are not confounded by combining with the other parents' contributions along the way.

Posted by: G.K. Higenbottam | June 11, 2007 07:29 PM

what happened to gavin menzies "1421-the year the chinese discovered the world? they took asiatic chickens with them,and they are found on both west and east coasts where no polynesian raft or boat could have reached.

Posted by: david lloyd harris | June 15, 2007 03:07 PM

What happened to Gavin Menzies' book "1421 The year China Discovered the World" In this he shows that the asiatic chickens were left in colonies on both coasts where no polynesian could have reached. He also comments on early travellers from China AD499 who noted the maguey trees.

Posted by: anon | June 20, 2007 04:18 PM

Yes, mitochondrial DNA is fast and D-loop is especially fast. If you want anything faster in animals you probably have to work with microsatellites (repetitive DNA) – and with ancient DNA this may not be an option since microsatellites are nuclear (mitochondrial genome, which has tens of copies per cell, may the only one that has survived throughout centuries in reasonably long fragments).
It is always a great achievement to be able to sequence any DNA at all from ancient samples. Little data is better than no data at all. What annoys me with this article is not the uncertain DNA-results but the way the results are presented: just the raw data in a table (with cryptic abbreviations, meaning of which one has to extract from the text, another table and genebank); there is no analysis of DNA data whatsoever. So one is supposed to see all the relevant patterns directly from the DNA sequences.
A phylogenetic tree is not perhaps the best way to present the results here (haplotype network might be more informative) but a tree is quickly done and better than no analysis at all. So, I constructed simple phylogenetic trees. Here you can find a consensus of the most parsimonius trees: http://tinyurl.com/295u57

Posted by: Mikko Kolkkala | July 26, 2007 09:36 AM

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