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The Y chromosome has a low mutation rate. Therefore, mutations on the Y
chromosome represent a record of its evolutionary past, and are used to
assist genealogists and archeologists in their research. As long as a
mutation does not affect the individual's ability to reproduce, it may be
preserved and handed down to offspring. An exchange of a single DNA
building block (i.e., a nucleotide) with another is called a Single
Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP), or a point mutation. Different combinations
of polymorphisms on the Y chromosome are known as haplotypes. By looking
at these changes biological relationships between 2 or more individuals
can be established by DNA lab testing.
Dr. Peter Underhill, at Stanford University, has used Y
chromosome SNP markers to discover genetic evidence that modern humans are
descendants from a single migration of archaic Homo sapiens, found to have
migrated out of Africa. The image on the left summarizes the findings
that researchers studying the Y chromosome have concluded by studying the
evolution of the Y chromosome.
The Y chromosome has also been used to study the colonization of Europe and the origin of some languages. The Finnish language is unique in Northern Europe, tracing its ancestry to the Uralic rather than Indo-European language family. This suggests that some of the Finnish genome originated in Northern Asia. But earlier genetic analysis showed that Finnish populations were closely related to the rest of Europe. Scientists have supported the hypothesis that the spread of language, not genes, accounts best for the uniqueness of the Finnish. However, Dr. Chris Tyler-Smith's group, at the University of Oxford, has discovered that Y polymorphisms abundantly present in Asia are also widespread in Finnish populations. They presented evidence of a migration out of Asia that is hard to refute. Nearly half of the Uralic-speaking Finns' Y chromosome lineages are similar to the central Asian Uralic speaking population. The study conforms to an interesting theory that the passing of a language from generation to generation is governed more by patrilineage than by matrilineage.
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