Whe Do Mutations Occur

[Maureen Surman]

When do mutations occur

If you do a search into the archives, you will find that a member of the staff of FTDNA tells of his brother matching his father exactly but he is one step off!! I am no 'rocket scientist' and have spent many months trying to understand all that is written about DNA but I have learnt that mutations, especially the fast moving markers, are a good indication of breaks in lineage, i.e. descent from a brother. We have several participants who have paper trails back to a common ancestor and branch off from brothers and then brothers again. One or two have 'gained' a mutation from their respective g*grandfather or closer in time. From reading the messages on this subject, I note that a mutation can 'repair' itself - I hope that it doesn't as it is a good indicator of where a particular person can continue their research if they have hit a brick wall.

MJS

[kennewickman]

Y Mutations of sibs.

Yes, my brother's Y -12 test came out one allele value different on DYS 391. I have mine out to a 37 marker test. I need to look at his Y chromo tested futher out, I guess, just to be sure. I am sure we are paternal brothers as 391 is the only one that was different.