The FTDNA Mitotree

• Introduction
• H37 on the Mitotree

Introduction

For the last few years FTDNA and their independant team of researchers have been working on an update to the current 2016 implemenation of the mitochondria phylotree - code named Million Mito Project. This new version of the tree, now called Mitotree, will remain dynamic so new mtDNA tests can change the tree and the names of branches can change.

As of late February 2025 FTDNA have announced the publication of the Beta version of the public Mitotree. This is covered in detail in Roberta Estes mtDNA blog post on the Mitotree.

These improvements to the Haplogroups will be rolled into our personal mtDNA tests, but at this moment my Mitotree Haplogroup is still in “Analyzing” mode.

However the public Mitotree does contain our H37 Haplogroup and for the most part it does retain this name, H37. There are major differences which I will explain in the next section.

H37 on the Mitotree

FTDNA have found our Haplogroup and retained the name for the Haplogroup H37 as a whole. That is great.

You can find it at the location https://discover.familytreedna.com/mtdna/H37/classic .

They have also found and named two main sub-branches, H37a and H37b, which are, in essence, the same as those we have already identified. That is, H37a being a near eastern sub-group, containing modern Armenian matches and some interesting early Bronze age matches in southern Bulgaria. And H37b, containing European matches.

However, I had identified H37b with the two mutations, A13748G (C16222T). The second mutation is enclosed in braces to indicate that it is not always present. This is because almost all of our existing matches include the C16222T mutation, except for one. This mutation is in the more rapidly mutating HVR1 region of the mtDNA genome. I had concluded that it was more likely that a more recent back mutation had occurred in the mother-line of this match which erased the change at this location. This commonly happens in mitochondrial DNA, which is one of the reasons that the Mitotree is so hard to figure out.

The Mitotree has interpreted the situation differently. They have allocated the C16222T as early, and that the single match we have without it must have branched off just after the A13748G mutation occurred, but before the C16222T mutation. No back-mutation.

Either interpretation is possible. The Mitotree interpretation is exciting because it could provide evidence of the general locality where this split could have occurred. Our match comes from Russia. The ancestry appears to be from the Volga region in the Ulyanovsk Oblast. Could this be the ancient region, or is it possibly Volga German, indicating a Rhineland German origin?

But this difference in interpretation also leads to an early departure in the naming of our branches - which will be a cause of confusion for a while. I had defined H37b as having both A13748G and C16222T. The Mitotree defines H37b as just the A13748G mutation, and they then create the new name H37b3 for the branch that includes C16222T.

Beyond that they have also allocated the lower branches in a different order to the order I chose. My branch order is consistent with YFull for branches known by YFull).

This table summarises the differences:

My Haplogroups	My Mutations	Mitotree Haplogroups	Mitotree Mutations
New	-	H37b	A13748G
H37b	A13748G (C16222T)	H37b3	C16222T
H37b1	T319C	H37b3b	T319C
H37b1a	A16170G	H37b3b2	A16170G
H37b1a1	C10961T	H37b3b2a	C10961T
H37b1b	C16111a	H37b3b1	C16111a
New	-	H37b3c	T152C! T9813C G16153A
New	-	H37b3+16311	T16311C!!!
H37b2	T16325C	-	-
H37b3	A2124G A11866G	-	-
H37b4	T4216C	H37b3a	C12043T
H37b4*	A73G! C12043T	H37b3a1	A73G! T4216C

The Discover Tool

The FTDNA Discover Tool is modelled after the tool of the same name for their YDNA Y700 customers. It has a lot of useful information.

The Haplogroup Story page gives a general summary of H37, ie there are currently 85 testers in the FTDNA database designated as H37. It also provides links to the two sub-branches H37a and H37b where you can drill down further. For example, under H37b, you’ll find there are 80 testers below this branch and the only descendant branch is H37b3.

The Country Frequency page will finally give us a better picture of the distribution of our matches. While we were in H the country frequency maps were useless.

The Notable Connections and Ancient Connections pages are unfortunately still of limited use as they take us to connections in other branches of H. We knoew there are two ancient matches under H37a. This should improve with time.

The Time Tree is only of use if you drill down a bit. It tries to show a time tree of all the branching in our Haplogroup. This bring up another issue. The dates shown are not realistic, they are far too young. For example, the Mitotree has H as originating 6859 BCE. It should be something like 16000 BCE. All the dates of the branches of H will be affected by this and be far too young as a consequence. This is a reminder that the Mitotree is still “Beta”. Errors like this will be ironed out.

The Match Time Tree page is meant to show a similar thing but with just your matches. This doesn’t work for me yet as FTDNA have not yet assigned my Mitotree Haplogroup yet.

The Classic Tree page is, to me, a much better way to view our tree.