You’ll excuse me while I jump for joy and do a happy dance. You might say I’m over the moon, pardon the pun. There’s nothing to lift your spirits quite like a pleasant surprise!I
In June, when our article, African mitochondrial haplogroup L7: a 100,000-year-old maternal human lineage discovered through reassessment and new sequencing was published, you may or may not have noticed that the journal name was “nature, scientific reports.” No, they don’t capitalize the words in the journal’s title.
I know I didn’t mention how difficult is it to get published in this particular journal, so you’ll just have to trust me about how many grey hairs I can attribute to that process.
Taking that into account, imagine my surprise today when I discovered our paper in the Editor’s Choice collection for 2022. That’s not only amazing, it was entirely unexpected. Ironically, they didn’t notify the authors, so we found out quite by accident.
“Congratulations!!!”
“For what?”
“Editor’s Choice”
“Editor’s Choice for what? Where?”
“Nature scientific reports – the Editor’s Choice articles for 2022. Your L7 paper. It’s there in Ancient DNA.”
“WHAT?????”
I had to look right away, of course, never mind that I was standing in line at the bank at the time. I hope they didn’t notice the strange woman giving out a little yelp and accompanying leap. Ok, maybe it was a tiny leap, more like a happy hop, but it still counts.
I was dumbstruck. Truth be told, I didn’t even realize there WAS a yearly Editor’s Choice collection. My bad. I probably shouldn’t admit that😊
The editor’s intro mentions that Svante Pääbo won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine this year for his work over the past several years on sequencing the genomes of extinct hominins, founding the field of paleogenetics.
Excuse my fan-girl exuberance, but it has truly been a banner year for genetics. I can’t help but be incredibly geeked! I had to read the announcement two or three times to be sure I was seeing what I was seeing.
Our paper was selected as one of 5 in the Mitogenomics section of the ancient DNA category and has accumulated just over 9700+ views which is actually amazing for a scientific paper. So, thank you everyone who read it. I’m glad we made the paper “open access,” which means free.
I wrote about our discovery, here and we published a video, here, but our paper is slightly different than the ancient DNA of the other papers in that category. The other papers utilize DNA extracted from ancient remains, but the “ancient DNA” of haplogroup L7, reaching back 100,000 years, was discovered in living people, with the exception of one 16,000-year-old ancient sample from Malawi that had initially been misclassified as L5, but has since been moved to L7.
That’s super-exciting because we know that this hen’s-teeth rare lineage still exists in a few people. Maybe you’re one of them. Maybe you carry a different but equally-as-rare mitochondrial lineage – your mother’s direct maternal line.
I hope you’ll test your mitochondrial DNA, here, to see what secrets are waiting for you.
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I am crying happy tears of joy for you right now!!!! You deserve this, I’m SO grateful for knowing you long enough to see and buy your book, knowing you are on to something BIG, and then see you included in this honorable publication. I am ultra proud of you.
Thank you so very much!
Congratulations how wonderful
Congratulations!! I have been enjoying your blog since I discovered it at the last Roots Tech.
Well deserved congratulations. I can feel the momentum with DNA research and tools. Really appreciate your efforts in taking us on the journey too. Thanks for sharing. From Oz.
Congratulations, and wow!
Congratulations!
Congratulations, Roberta! Thanks for sharing your knowledge and passion on DNA. I’ve learned so much from you and am pleased to see your scholarship recognized in this professional journal. Well done!
Congratulations! I hope this inspires more and more people to take an mtDNA test.
So do I Ann. Thank you.
This is so awesome, Roberta. This is not an easy subject to study–you are so smart. Congratulations!
Congratulations!
Wow and Congratulations! I am excited to see solid science and engaging writing recognized in one fell swoop in a prestigious forum.
I do need to be clear that in terms of the writing that Dr. Paul Maier is the lead author on this – so the writing itself is his. And yes, he did an amazing job.
Congratulations Roberta! Thank you so much for freely sharing your knowledge.
Congrats! I’m proud to know you.
Robin
Know me. You have the bad fortune to be my cousin. There’s no “not claiming” me:)
Exciting always to see your name in print! It is self-affirming of hard work! Remember when I first saw my name in a medical journal! I never went on to much further research, as that was not my goal, but to be recognized by what you know to be the right people–well, that puts you “over the moon!” This is especially true when you have felt like a “voice crying in the wilderness.” Congratulations.
Dr. Billy (WF Cale, MD retired)
Wonderful!
Congratulations!!! You deserve it!!!
You are such a great teacher. I have learned so much. I don’t leap, but I do smile every time I spot an Estes in a line I am searching 😊
Happy dance indeed! Having your work so professionally rrecognized is well worth celebrating. I personally appreciate all the blog posts you’ve done that have helped me understand genetic genealogy better, and your analysis of testing company and too providers. Thanks for all you do to make genetic genealogy understandable and easier to navigate!.
Congratulations!
Congratulations Roberta – I’ll look forward to following up.
Happy Christmas and New Year to you and your family. Carol
Congratulations for getting chosen! To realize there are still ancient haplogroups to discover, this time just by looking at the data with fresh eyes! This is absolutely mind blowing, and well deserve your team and you this second time in the limelight among nature’s publications. ^__^
Congratulations, Roberta. I am so proud of you!