DNA Used To Identify Father's Remains
Botkin and his wife had four children, daughter Marina and sons Nikita, Peter, and Yevgeny (Eugene). He also had a stepdaughter, Kyra. His daughter Marina Botkina Schweitzer's DNA was later used to help identify the remains of her grandfather, Eugene Botkin, after they were exhumed in 1991 from a mass grave discovered in Ganina Yama near Ekaterinburg. Schweitzer's DNA was compared against the DNA of her maternal half-sister Kyra, who also gave a blood sample, to help scientists isolate the DNA Schweitzer shared in common with her grandfather. This enabled scientists to create a "Botkin DNA profile" and use it to positively identify Dr. Botkin. Scientists in the early 1990s were unable to identify Dr. Botkin using mitochondrial DNA, or DNA that is passed down from mother to child, as they used it to identify the Romanovs. Schweitzer was descended from Dr. Botkin in the paternal line and didn't share mitochondrial DNA with her father and grandfather.
Schweitzer later expressed skepticism about the DNA results proving that Anna Anderson could not have been the Grand Duchess Anastasia.
Read more about this topic: Gleb Botkin
Famous quotes containing the words dna, identify, father and/or remains:
“Here [in London, history] ... seemed the very fabric of things, as if the city were a single growth of stone and brick, uncounted strata of message and meaning, age upon age, generated over the centuries to the dictates of some now all-but-unreadable DNA of commerce and empire.”
—William Gibson (b. 1948)
“The Louvre is a morgue; you go there to identify your friends.”
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963)
“My father is one of the few men I know who say they do not like Shakespeare. He says “Shakespeare is so very coarse.” I could forgive my father for not liking Shakespeare if it was only because Shakespeare wrote poetry, but this is not the reason. He says he likes Tennyson and this gravely aggravates his offence.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)