Background
Project created January 9, 2006. "Katrine," the founding mother of mitochondrial DNA haplogroup K, was one of the "Seven Daughters of Eve" as listed in the 2001 book of that title by Bryan Sykes. A lot has happened since 2001, but the book is still valuable. Katrine lived about 16,000 years ago. Perhaps the oldest known K descendant was Oetzi the Iceman whose frozen body was discovered in the Alps in 1991. Estimated at 5000 years old, the Iceman proved to have the basic mutations for a K: 16224C and 16311C. Every K is a cousin of Oetzi.
Although the "defining motifs" for K are ususually shown as HyperVariable Region 1 (HVR1) mutations 16224C and 16311C, virtually all K's have 16519C in HVR1 plus 073G, 263G and 315.1C in HVR2. Those K's not shown as having those mutations likely have not been tested for them, although "back mutations" do occur. The FamilyTreeDNA mtDNAPlus test should find them all. Virtually every K will also have other mutations as part of a subclade or as personal mutations. All mutations are differences from the Cambridge Reference Sequence (CRS). There is at present no K subclade test publicly available.
For an mtDNA phylogenetic tree with K in its proper position see
here. For further information about mtDNA in general, start with the World Families Network
mtDNA Page. See also Rich Groleau
article "Tracing Ancestry with mtDNA." McDonald's mtDNA and Y-DNA Haplogroup
Maps. See
Wikipedia mtDNA haplogroup K entry. An older set of charts, using HVR1 and HVR2 for K may be found on John S. Walden's website at:
John S. Walden Website Ian Logan has published K charts based on full sequence mtDNA tests. These differ from the above versions, apparently partly because no sequences were from the British Isles.
Ian Logan's K Charts Other charts and references will be added later.
The paper by Dr. Doron Behar on Ashkenazi Jewish mtDNA contains much information on haplogroup K, including the most detailed chart yet on K. See:
Doron Behar paper on Ashkenazi mtDNA K Members Genetic Distance Tables Produced from Tom Glad's mtDNA-Analysis Utility. For background see the News tab under 7/9/06.
High-Resolution K Entries from MitoSearch For background see the News tab under 7/11/06. For mtDNA information, including the medical aspects of certain coding-region mutations, see
here.