Lost Colony DNA Project - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Lost Colony of Roanoke DNA Project was founded by a group led by Roberta Estes in 2005 in order to solve the mystery of the Lost Colony of Roanoke

Roanoke Colony

The Roanoke Colony on Roanoke Island in Dare County, present-day North Carolina, United States was a late 16th-century attempt to establish a permanent English settlement in what later became the Virginia Colony. The enterprise was financed and organized by Sir Walter Raleigh and carried out by...

using historical records, migration patterns, oral histories and DNA

DNA

Deoxyribonucleic acid is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms . The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in...

testing.

Project background

In 1587, Sir Walter Raleigh sent out over 117 men, women, and children to establish the City of Raleigh on Roanoke Island

Roanoke Island

Roanoke Island is an island in Dare County near the coast of North Carolina, United States. It was named after the historical Roanoke Carolina Algonquian people who inhabited the area in the 16th century at the time of English exploration....

in present day North Carolina

North Carolina

North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...

as the first English colony in the New World

New World

The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...

. The vessel sailed to England three weeks later with the colony's Governor, John White, to obtain desperately needed supplies, but it was unable to return until 1590. When the supply ship finally returned, the colony was gone, apparently not destroyed, but removed. The only clue was the word "Croatoan" carved into a tree.

John White, whose daughter, son-in-law, and grandchild Virginia Dare

Virginia Dare

Virginia Dare was the first child born in the Americas to English parents, Eleanor and Ananias Dare. She was born into the short-lived Roanoke Colony in what is now North Carolina, USA. What became of Virginia and the other colonists remains a mystery...

, were among the colonists, believed this message meant they had gone to Croatoan Island where their friend Manteo was Chief of the Indians. Some historian

Historian

A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...

s say they perished, but clues and rumors persisted for decades that they did not, that they were either captured by or assimilated into the native

Indigenous peoples

Indigenous peoples are ethnic groups that are defined as indigenous according to one of the various definitions of the term, there is no universally accepted definition but most of which carry connotations of being the "original inhabitants" of a territory....

population

Population

A population is all the organisms that both belong to the same group or species and live in the same geographical area. The area that is used to define a sexual population is such that inter-breeding is possible between any pair within the area and more probable than cross-breeding with individuals...

. The Lost Colony of Roanoke DNA Project seeks to discover whether the colonists perished or survived as part of the indigenous

Indigenous peoples

culture

Culture

Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...

DNA project plan

The project plan includes the following steps:

Locate and test individuals closely associated with local families whose history implies they are of Native American
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...

ancestry, specifically those who lived on the land that is historically associated with Native villages where the colonists would have located.
Perform DNA testing descendants of these early inhabitants to determine whether their deep ancestry indicates Native American or Indo-European
Indo-European
Indo-European may refer to:* Indo-European languages** Aryan race, a 19th century and early 20th century term for those peoples who are the native speakers of Indo-European languages...

origins.
Work with administrators of the DNA surname project
Surname project
A surname DNA project is a genetic genealogy project which uses genealogical DNA tests to trace male lineage.Because surnames are passed down from father to son in many cultures, and Y-chromosomes are passed from father to son with a predictable rate of mutation, people with the same surname can...

to determine whether English families of surnames matching those of the Lost Colonists have already been DNA tested.
Connect English families of the same surname to Lost Colonists genealogically.
Using DNA, genealogy and history, attempt to connect living descendants to colonists and local Native American tribes.
Certify the genealogy of those believed to be connected to the Lost Colony.
Reconstruct families of interest using DNA results and genealogy.
Track population migration using DNA to discover what happened to the colonists and the native population, who their descendants are, and where they live today.
After development of the above data base, perform DNA testing of archaeologically excavated skeletal remains to determine who they match.

Types of DNA testing

The Lost Colony of Roanoke DNA Project utilizes the following types of DNA tests:

Y Chromosome
Y chromosome
The Y chromosome is one of the two sex-determining chromosomes in most mammals, including humans. In mammals, it contains the gene SRY, which triggers testis development if present. The human Y chromosome is composed of about 60 million base pairs...

DNA Testing follows the paternal ancestral line. The paternal line follows the surname

Surname

A surname is a name added to a given name and is part of a personal name. In many cases, a surname is a family name. Many dictionaries define "surname" as a synonym of "family name"...

. The Y chromosome is passed from father to son, so this kind of testing is conducive to surname projects. This type of testing will be used with those believed to be descendants of those whose surnames are of interest to this project. This type of testing not only links people genealogically, but can indicate individuals of Native American and African ancestry.

Mitochondrial DNA
Mitochondrial DNA
Mitochondrial DNA is the DNA located in organelles called mitochondria, structures within eukaryotic cells that convert the chemical energy from food into a form that cells can use, adenosine triphosphate...

(mtDNA) testing follows the maternal line and has long been used to track patterns of human migration. It was originally believed that only women pass their mtDNA to their children of both gender

Gender

Gender is a range of characteristics used to distinguish between males and females, particularly in the cases of men and women and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them. Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary from sex to social role to gender identity...

s. It has since been proven that paternal transmission of mtDNA does very rarely occur in human beings. It is possible that knowledge of paternal mtDNA was not available when this project was first started; in any case paternal mtDNA transmission is extremely rare and highly unlikely to affect tests except when the sample size

Sample size

Sample size determination is the act of choosing the number of observations to include in a statistical sample. The sample size is an important feature of any empirical study in which the goal is to make inferences about a population from a sample...

is unduly small. Mitochondrial DNA is also usually the last surviving DNA, because it is present in larger amounts than nuclear DNA, and so it would likely be the type of testing to use on the skeletons most likely to yield robust results.

Autosomal DNA testing is different from yline and mtDNA. Autosomal DNA is the DNA where you receive 50% from each parent (as opposed to yline and mtDNA where there is no DNA from the other parent involved). Because of this 50% mixture rate from each generation, autosomal DNA testing today is not reliably relevant for genealogical testing. The data bases available for autosomal comparison for genealogical purposes are not yet mature. The Lost Colony DNA Project is not actively pursuing autosomal testing, but will include those tests in its records for those who have already been individually tested.

External links

Lost Colony Research Group Blog
Lost Colony Research Group Website
http://www.genpage.com/Roanoke_Lost_Colony.html
A List of All Participants in the Roanoke Voyages
Melungeon Historical Society

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Project background

DNA project plan

Types of DNA testing

Further reading

External links