The Deep Clade SNP results received todate for the REMS Group confirms an SNP of R1a1. An R1a1 Modal Haplotype has been arbitrarily selected for 37 markers. As more 37 marker results are received a truer modal haplotype should begin to emerge. A team of geneticists studying the ancestry of Jewish communities has found an unusual genetic signature that occurs in more than half the Levites of Ashkenazi descent. The genetic signature occurs on the male or Y chromosome and comes from a few men, or perhaps a single ancestor, who lived about 1,000 years ago. The report published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, was prepared by population geneticists in Israel, the United States and England. They say that 52 percent of Levites of Ashkenazi origin have a particular genetic signature that originated in Central Asia, although it is also found less frequently in the Middle East. The researchers suggest the ancestor who introduced it into the Ashkenazi Levites could perhaps have been from the Khazars, a Turkic tribe whose king converted to Judaism in the eighth or ninth century. Their reasoning is that the signature, a set of DNA variations known as R1a1, is common in the region north of Georgia that was once occupied by the Khazar kingdom. The signature did reach the Near East, probably before the founding of the Jewish community, but it is still rare there. The present descendants of the Khazars have not been identified. If the patrilineal descent of the two priestly castes had indeed been followed as tradition describes, then all Levites [should be descended] from Levi, the third son of the patriarch Jacob. But the picture among the Levites was less clear, suggesting that they had a mixed ancestry. Dr. Hammer and Dr. Skorecki returned to the puzzle for their new report, based on data gathered from nearly 1,000 men of Ashkenazi and Sephardi origin and neighboring non-Jewish populations. The paternal ancestry of the Ashkenazi and Sephardic Levites is different