http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/08/01/oukoe-uk-britain-tutankhamun-dna-idUKTRE7704OR20110801
Up to 70 percent of British men and half of all Western European men are related to the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun, geneticists in Switzerland said.
Scientists at Zurich-based DNA genealogy centre, iGENEA, reconstructed the DNA profile of the boy Pharaoh, who ascended the throne at the age of nine, his father Akhenaten and grandfather Amenhotep III, based on a film that was made for the Discovery Channel.
The results showed that King Tut belonged to a genetic profile group, known as haplogroup R1b1a2, to which more than 50 percent of all men in Western Europe belong, indicating that they share a common ancestor.
Among modern-day Egyptians this haplogroup contingent is below 1 percent, according to iGENEA.
"It was very interesting to discover that he belonged to a genetic group in Europe -- there were many possible groups in Egypt that the DNA could have belonged to," said Roman Scholz, director of the iGENEA Centre.
Around 70 percent of Spanish and 60 percent of French men also belong to the genetic group of the Pharaoh who ruled Egypt more than 3,000 years ago.
"We think the common ancestor lived in the Caucasus about 9,500 years ago," Scholz told Reuters.
It is estimated that the earliest migration of haplogroup R1b1a2 into Europe began with the spread of agriculture in 7,000 BC, according to iGENEA.
However, the geneticists were not sure how Tutankhamun's paternal lineage came to Egypt from its region of origin.
The centre is now using DNA testing to search for the closest living relatives of "King Tut."
"The offer has only been publicised for three days but we have already seen a lot of interest," Scholz told Reuters.
Its actually well known that the ancient Egyptians were white.
I think theres actually a picture of her mummy somewhere.
I'll have to hunt it down. Ramses was a redhead.
A personal genomics company in Switzerland says they've reconstructed a DNA profile of King Tutankhamen by watching the Discovery Channel, claiming the results suggest more than half of Western European men are related to the boy king. But researchers who worked to decode Tut's genome in the first place say the claim is "unscientific."
Swiss genomics company iGENEA has launched a Tutankhamen DNA project based on what they say are genetic markers that appeared on a computer screen during a Discovery Channel special on the famous pharaoh's genetic lineage.
"Maybe they didn't know what they showed, but we got 16 markers from the Y chromosome from these pharaohs," Roman Scholz, the managing director of iGENEA, told LiveScience.
If the claims were true, it would put King Tut in a genetic profile group shared by more than half of Western European men. That would make those men relatives — albeit distant ones — of the pharaoh.
But Carsten Pusch, a geneticist at Germany's University of Tubingen who was part of the team that unraveled Tut's DNA from samples taken from his mummy and mummies of his family members, said that iGENEA's claims are "simply impossible." Pusch and his colleagues published part of their results, though not the Y-chromosome DNA, in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in 2010. The Y chromosome is the sex chromosome found only in males, and looking at the genes in this chromosome would show Tut's male lineage.
Pusch's team used snippets of Y-chromosome DNA to link Tut to his closest relatives, identifying his mom and dad. But they didn't publish the full genetic data that would allow genomics companies like iGENEA to link modern people to the Tutankhamen lineage. According to Scholz, that crucial data is what appeared on the Discovery Channel.
"Dr. Albert Zink from the EURAC [European Academy of Bolzano, an independent research center] in Bolzano and co-author of the 2010 JAMA publication screened the footage and confirmed that the company acts very unscientific," Pusch wrote in an email to LiveScience. "The Swiss company did not try to get into contact with us prior to launching their new Internet page."
The alleged Discovery Channel markers put Tut in a genetic profile group, or haplogroup, that also includes more than half of the men in Western Europe. Scholz said the company is now searching for the closest living relatives of Tutankhamen, men who share all 16 genetic markers on the pharaoh's supposed Y chromosome. Exact matches get a refund for their $179 to $399 test and will also get free additional DNA analysis.
The haplogroup R1b1a2, which iGENEA claims includes King Tut, arose 9,500 years ago in the Black Sea region. How Tut's ancestors would have gotten from that region to Egypt is unknown, but Scholz said iGENEA hopes to learn more by collecting more close and exact matches from modern people of Western European descent.
"The better the match, the more recent the common ancestor," Scholz said.
But people hoping to prove that they've got an ancestor in common with the notoriously sickly boy king should take iGENEA's claims with a grain of salt, Pusch said: "It appears that they try to better sell their DNA testing kit by using the media attention connected to King Tut."
You can follow LiveScience senior writer Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.
It's actually one of the most heated and tangled debates around.
QuoteIt's actually one of the most heated and tangled debates around.
Heh. I'll just bet it is.