OXFORD, ENGLAND—Twelve mitochondrial genomes from two lineages of the White Plymouth Rock chicken, which has a well-documented pedigree, have been sequenced by an international team of scientists. The researchers found that in one case, mitochondrial DNA was passed from a father to its offspring, and overall, the rate of mutation since the two lineages split is up to 30 times faster than had been thought. Two mutations occurred within the past 50 years, or a rate of four percent per million years, rather than one percent per million years. “If we use an incorrect mutation rate, then our estimates of the timing of chicken domestication will be very wrong,” Simon Ho of Sydney University told ABC News Australia. Chickens are thought to have been carried by the people who colonized the islands of the Pacific Ocean. “We may be able to apply this new rate to our data and see whether the dates for the original chickens in the islands and Southeast Asia and their movement out into the South Pacific correlates well with radiocarbon dating of human remains along that translocation route,” commented Jeremy Austin of the University of Adelaide. For more about archaeology and chickens, go to "Kon Tiki Fried Chicken?"
