Dr. Marek Kimmel has been invited to provide his professional expertise for Smithsonian article No, a Mitochondrial “Eve” Is Not the First Female in a Species. Congratulations!
“In any generation there will be some individuals that will leave no progeny,” Marek Kimmel, a professor of statistical genetics and molecular evolution at Rice University, tells Smithsonian.com. “Their genes will be eliminated.” He added that the number of individuals passing their genes to further generations is shrinking all the time, meaning that mitochondrial Eve isn’t a fixed individual over time, but could become more recent as lineages die out.
“If you reach deep enough into the past, you always find a common ancestor of everybody,” says Kimmel, who published a study in 2010 that places the mitochondrial Eve of humans back to around 100,000 to 250,000 years ago (a 2013 study estimated the age as a little more recent)”.
Sounds intriguing?
Read the whole article on: www.smithsonianmag.com
Marek Kimmel is a professor of statistical genetics and molecular evolution at Rice University.