In: Biology
One of the most famous people claiming to be Grand Duchess Anastasia was Anna Anderson, who died in the United States in 1984. What types of DNA analyses were used to verify the true identity of Ms. Anderson, and what were the conclusions from these studies?
Begin your search by reading Stoneking, M., et al. 1995. Establishing the identity of Anna Anderson Manahan. Nature Genet. 9: 9–10.
DNA profiles from bones of Anna Anderson were compared with the blood samples of living relatives, HRH and the duke of Edinburgh establishing that the remains were those of the Russian royal family. The DNA profiling studies were done by using the STR analysis of the quadruplex and mtDNA analysis. The non coding region of the mtDNA was sequenced and compared with the blood samples of the duke and there were six differences in the hypervariable region indicating that there is no maternal relationship between Anna and Duke. The DNA profiles of Carl mauscher who was a great nephew of schanzkowska was compared to that of Anna and there were similarities observed between them at certain locations. Hence carl mauscher may be a maternal relative of Anna. To further tell that carl and anna are related certain putative genes were profiled and then they found out that there were no similarities and hence concluded that no similarities existed between carl and anna. Hence anna is not a maternal relative to the Russian royal blood line.
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