Jesse James: results, Mark Stoneking

Interviewee: Mark Stoneking. Mark Stoneking talks about Jesse James's results.

Jesse James had a sister Zelda or Zirelda, who had a descend - who had a daughter who had a daughter, and who had a son so we had his, a sample of his mitochondrial DNA, and another maternal relative of Jesse James. So, and when we compared them all, all of the mitochondrial DNA sequences matched. So we're unable from the DNA analysis to exclude him as being a maternal relative of the Jesse James lineage. Now it could still be that he's, the skeletal remains were not those of Jesse James but rather those of someone who by chance happens to have the same mitochondrial DNA type. We can estimate what the probability of that would be from a database of mitochondrial DNA types and that particular mitochondrial DNA type is actually unique in our database, so it's a very small probability that that, some random individual would have that same mitochondrial DNA type. So from that we concluded that he was indeed Jesse James, although for those who still counted themselves among the descendants of the claimants to be Jesse James, it still was not sufficient evidence.

mitochondrial dna sequences,mark stoneking,dna analysis,jesse james,skeletal remains,claimants,lineage,descendants,probability,zelda

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