The Family and the Family Tree

Analyzing the Family Tree

FamilySearch holds one of the largest collections of linked family history data in the world. Nearly one billion records of individuals, both deceased and living, have been recorded and placed together into a common tree (“The Family Tree”). The study of this ancestral relationship graph consists of the largest family history network ever analyzed. We have found a number of interesting properti...

Ferment in the family tree.

In 1953, botanist Jonathan D. Sauer suggested that our initial motivation to cultivate cereals was not for flour or bread, but for beer (1). The implications of this idea— that a preference for dietary ethanol, or alcohol, sparked the Neolithic Revolution (2)—are profound. No stage of human evolution has left a larger global footprint than the domestication of plants, animals, and landscapes (3...

An AAA family tree.

Resolving the Family Tree of Placental Mammals

Background: Genetic analysis of Escherichia coli O157:H7 strains has shown divergence into two distinct lineages, lineages I and II, that appear to have distinct ecological characteristics, with lineage I strains more commonly associated with human disease. In this study, microarray-based comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) was used to identify genomic differences among 31 E. coli O157:H7 s...

Intractable Tangles in the Bird Family Tree

Rapid sequential speciation events can outpace the fixation of genetic variants, resulting in a family tree that lacks clear branching patterns. A new study of bird genomes reveals such an explosive super-radiation that may coincide with the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period.