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.
Mark Stoneking
Stoneking came to prominence both in the academic and media circles with his work on mitochondrial DNA variation among different human populations. He started under the supervision of Allan Wilson and following the pioneering work of his senior graduate student, Rebecca Cann. Cann had collected data from different human populations, including those of Asians, Africans, and Europeans. Then Stoneking added data from aboriginal Australians and New Guineans. In 1987, after a year of pending, their paper was published in "Nature" in which their findings indicated that all living humans were descended through a single mother, who lived ~200,000 years ago in Africa. The common hypothetical mother is dubbed Mitochondrial Eve, and the concept directly implies recent African origin of modern humans, hence, the underpinning of the so-called "Recent Out of Africa" theory. In spite of criticisms, and religious antagonisms, even after two decades he still holds this view to be as valid as any scientific theory since a number independent research also corroborates their original human mtDNA phylogenetic tree.Stoneking has appeared in