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U5 mtDNA

  • 4784 members

About us

Our aims
To provide the best help for all U5-members to learn and understand as much as possible about their subclade.
* for the U5 general project: to add HVR1/HVR2-testers to their tentative groups, and thus give advice about further testing for those who are interested
* encourage more research for U5 FGS-results, so we all can learn more.
* encourage and help those interested in donating their FGS-sequences to GenBank, to be accessible to researchers all over the world
* maintain the best level of privacy for our members, at the same time as we try to learn from each other's results

 ...
The goal of the U5 project is to document family connections and ethnic migrations of families who are part of the U5 haplogroup. Scientific knowledge of this group is still in its infancy. Published scientific papers on haplogroup U5 have been based on relatively small numbers of participants, and we are all pioneers in this emerging field. By including the mtDNA results of participants of former scientific studies with our unique combination of mtDNA profiles and family histories, we will contribute to the base of knowledge about Haplogroup U5 and its branches, its ethnic origins, and its historic migration. Equally important, we will attempt to discover our personal branches of the U5 tree and begin to connect the pedigrees of our ancestral women who share this haplogroup.

While a top level haplogroup such as U5 can usually be assigned using HVR1 results, the mitochondrial Full Genome Sequene (FGS) test is needed to precisely identify daughter groups of haplogroup U5. The FGS test may also be useful in some cases for identifying relationships in a genealogical time frame. The purpose of the FGS test is to:

a) more accurately establish the actual mutation rate of the female inherited mtDNA;

b) more accurately place the female inherited DNA of all project participants on the U5 tree;

c) apply statistics to more accurately predict the age of daughter groups of U5 and to predict when two people who match identically likely shared a MRCA (Most Recent Common Ancestor).


If you have already completed the FGS test, please consider making the results visible to U5 project administrators by going to the "User Preferences" on your FTDNA home page, scroll down to the bottom of the page, and check the three boxes that make HVR1, HVR2 and CR results visible in the U5 project. The results will be available only to the project administrators, and individual results will remain anonymous.

If you prefer not to share your FGS results with the U5 project, an alternative is to publish the result anonymously in GenBank. Ian Logan will also help prepare the submission file needed to anonymously publish your FGS test result in GenBank so that it can be used for mtDNA research and to better define the U5 tree:
http://www.ianlogan.co.uk/checker/genbank.htm