Thursday, February 07, 2013

James Lick on analyzing the mtDNA of Richard III with very little data [UPDATED]

As James says:

I thought it would be fun to try analyzing the mtDNA sequence of the presumed Richard III skeleton using my mthap program to see what it comes up with.

Unfortunately, only a 53bp fragment of the ~16569bp mtDNA sequence has been released so far, via this image on the University of Leicester web site [see here for the rest]

(Please note that this is not meant to cast doubt on the identification. It is merely to show how much objective data we can determine based on the currently released information.)

UPDATE

More detail on Richard III's probable mtDNA:

http://blog.jameslick.com/?p=1335

No comments: