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The ‘Ashkenazi BRCA mutations'
Published in Jessica Mozersky, Risky Genes, 2012
Mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosome studies generate knowledge about ancestry and create links between Ashkenazi Jews in the present and their biological ancestors, and they reiterate the descent of Jews from a common and fairly homogeneous ancestral group (Kahn 2005). Brodwin (2002) claims these studies privilege genetics in determining identity above other claims such as oral history, written documentation, cultural practices and inner convictions, ignoring the social ways in which identity is constructed. One of the lead scientists of the Cohen modal haplotype research acknowledges that genetics forms only one small part of a much larger story that includes history, texts, culture, archaeology and many other areas of enquiry (Goldstein 2008). Another of the contributing researchers to the Cohen modal haplotype research explained that genetic identity is just one of many ways in which Jewish identity is formed but acknowledged that it is potentially confusing to have studies which seem to imply that being Jewish is genetic (personal communication). Brodwin (2002) warns that being a carrier of the Cohen modal haplotype could be used in order to make citizenship claims to Israel, although this has not yet occurred. As Rose (2007) astutely notes, the issue at stake is not discrimination but damage to identity because these studies have the potential to undermine or corroborate a group's creation story or communal narrative and to challenge or transform how individuals and groups come to understand their affinities and distinctions. In the case of Ashkenazi Jews, these studies corroborate a communal narrative, although Azoulay (2006) is highly critical of such studies and argues that the precondition of a ‘Cohen gene’ is supposed common ancestry, which ignores the explicitly social ways in which identity is constructed.
Paternal lineages in southern Iberia provide time frames for gene flow from mainland Europe and the Mediterranean world
Published in Annals of Human Biology, 2019
Candela L. Hernández, Jean-Michel Dugoujon, Luis J. Sánchez-Martínez, Pedro Cuesta, Andrea Novelletto, Rosario Calderón
The most frequent 7 Y-STR haplotype affiliated to the haplogroup R1b-M269 (39/234, total Andalusian sample) was DYS19(14)-DYS389I(13)-DYS389II(16)-DYS390(24)-DYS391(11)-DYS392(13)-DYS393(13). This modal haplotype contains the so-called Atlantic Modal Haplotype (AMH) DYS19(14)-DYS390(24)-DYS391(11)-DYS392(13)-DYS393(13) (without DYS389 I/II) (Wilson et al. 2001). The AMH appears at a relatively high frequency in the Atlantic Iberian populations [20% in WAndal (present study), 14.5% in Portugal and 19% in Galicia]. A similar geographic distribution of lineage R1b-M529 could justify the association between this sub-branch and both the modal and the AMH haplotypes.