It has to be the greatest story ever told - the unravelling of DNA. Now, researchers at Oxford University are hoping to use NDA analysis track the ancestry of people with the surname Christmas by looking at similarities and differences in the male, or Y, chromosomes of volunteers. The study is being supported by the efforts of a Mr Henry Christmas, a former telecoms engineer, who has for the last fifty years been tracing his family tree and the origins and history of his family name.
Lead researcher Bryan Sykes explains that swabs will be taken from inside the cheek of volunteers to obtain a DNA sample. "If it's a single family with one original founder, then most of them will have the same Y chromosome fingerprint. If there's more than one, we'll identify that," said Bryan Sykes. The suspicion is that such an unusual surname will have just one founder [unlike a name like Bradley for instance, which means merely "broad field" and is as common as muck, Ed.] In other words, Sykes is looking for the original Father Christmas <g>
Sykes' Christmas study is part of a bigger national geneological project to map the genetic history of Britain. One point of contention in this kind of research is that it can pinpoint fecund female infidelity...like I said, a great story...
Where does Santa Claus live and other Christmas questions?
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