The new article in The American Journal of Human Genetics, A “Copernican” Reassessment of the Human Mitochondrial DNA Tree from its Root, is open access, so you should check it out. The discussion gets to the heart of the matter:
Supported by a consensus of many colleagues and after a few years of hesitation, we have reached the conclusion that on the verge of the deep-sequencing revolution…when perhaps tens of thousands of additional complete mtDNA sequences are expected to be generated over the next few years, the principal change we suggest cannot be postponed any longer: an ancestral rather than a “phylogenetically peripheral” and modern mitogenome from Europe should serve as the epicenter of the human mtDNA reference system. Inevitably, the proposed change could raise some temporary inconveniences. For this reason, we provide tables and software to aid data transition.
What we propose is much more than a mere clerical change. We use the Ptolemaian geocentric versus Copernican heliocentric systems as a metaphor. And the metaphor extends further: as the acceptance of the heliocentric system circumvented epicycles in the orbits of planets, switching the mtDNA reference to an ancestral RSRS will end an academically inadmissible conjuncture where virtually all mitochondrial genome …