About Me

My current interests are in Genealogy, but particularly DNA. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and Y-Chromosome (YDNA) Haplogroups are the areas of most interest. My YDNA terminal SNP is I-Y70065, which is a branch of the I1 Haplogroup, and my mtDNA is H.

My DNA was tested by the company Family Tree DNA (FTDNA) and they do an excellent job with YDNA. They use the YDNA of all their testers to identify new SNP branches, so for testers who have done the Y700 test, new branches are always appearing. But mtDNA is the poor cousin I’m afraid. The official mtDNA phylotree is currently static and does not grow dynamically. The last update was published in 2016 and FTDNA just uses this tree. But this is an opportunity for citizen science. It encouraged me to learn a lot about mtDNA and how to build my own tree. While FTDNA has my mtDNA Haplogroup as H, I was about to use information obtained from my matches to discover that I’m really in an unexplored new branch of H. The DNA Analysis company YFull does have a dynamic mtDNA system and they have also identified this branch and called it H37. Using my matches I’ve developed my own version of the H37 tree which is more detailed than the YFull version.

This web-site exists to mostly explore my H37 mtDNA branch and for other members of H37 to read. I will also include some YDNA information, but there is less happening on that front.

mtDNA Haplogroup H37 Blog

• 2021/01/07 - Useful Resources for your mtDNA researches
• 2021/01/08 - Purchasing an mtDNA test
• 2021/01/13 - About the new Haplogroup H37
• 2021/02/14 - Confirming a third cousin
• 2021/02/28 - H37 Time Sequence
• 2021/03/01 - Ancient Bulgaria
• 2021/04/22 - A new match - and some more detail on mtDNA mutations
• 2021/11/09 - A new unknown match
• 2021/12/13 - A couple of surprising matches
• 2022/05/01 - H37 descentants family tree
• 2024/04/04 - Join the H Subclade Discovery Project
• 2025/03/02 - The FTDNA Mitotree