Mitochondrial DNA
Mitochondrial DNA was discovered in the 1960s by Margit M. K. Nass and Sylvan Nass by electron microscopy as DNase-sensitive threads inside mitochondria, and by Ellen Haslbrunner, Hans Tuppy and Gottfried Schatz by biochemical assays on highly purified mitochondrial fractions.
Who We Are and How We Got Here
Since 2010, population geneticists have been able to sequence ancient human DNA, recovering complete genomes, in contrast to earlier approaches which relied on the far more abundant (and hence more easily recovered) mitochondrial DNA, which is present in many copies in each cell, and transmitted only via the maternal line. That early work gave the "exciting" result that all modern humans are related to "Mitochondrial Eve", a woman who lived in Africa only about 160,000 years ago.