genetic analysis and - get ready - Charles I's bones

I haven't actually had any time to follow the board, including the
genetic analysis discussion that I helped start.

Having realized that people on this list had no idea that those
royals had porphyria (unless that's what you all have been
discussing), I have been working very hard to transcribe my stuff.
I've actually batted around the idea of a royals and porphyria web
site for some time - eithe rthat, or I will have much of McAlpine's
and Hunter's stuff and my charts (and theirs) in my yahoo briefcase.

But in the process of checking something form the MacAlpine and
Hunter book that I've lost, I discovered that a new book has been
published, by Rohl et al; Purple Genes. They present evidence that
more recent royals including Queen Victoria herself and some of her
descendants had porphyria.

McAlpine and Hunter obtained samples for testing from the family of
the Crown Prince of Hanover, around 1968/69, and found four members
to have variegate porphyria, which together with finding this
extremely rare genetic disorder in two people independently descended
from James I, proves conclusively that these people had porphyria.

I followed the chain of clues to atleast the children of William the
Conqueror.

But - get ready for this - the authors of the new book got their paws
on teh bones of Charles I, and several other European royals - and
had it genetically analyzed, thus establishing even MORE conclusive
proof.

Dora

I've now had time to get into Rohl's book and look at
exactly what they found how...

They didn't actually get Charles I's bones. They got
something believed to be his burial shroud. They
learned nothing by examining the DNA on it.

They did exhume two German princes, descended from
Queen Victoria, mother and daughter. Circumstances
made it hard to be sure daughter was really daughter,
so they compared the mitochondrial DNA, and compared
it to that of Prince Philip of England, whose DNA is
also that of Queen Victoria's direct female line and
was used to establish the indentities of the Romanov's
from their burial site. Mother was who she was
suppsed to be but daughter was really somebody else.

Analysis of DNA of Charlotte, daughter of Princess
Victoria, the daughter of Queen Victoria who married
the king of Prussia, found no matches to the seven
mutations to the gene for protoporphyrinogen oxidase
known to cause VP at that time - while nine are known
now - but it did find a mutation, the significance of
which is not known. Like most genes, the gene for
PPOX has long regions that don't do anything. On the
other hand, a number of porphyria causing mutations
began as previously unknown mutations of those genes.

Rohl states in an article about his book at his
university academic newspaper, that Charlotte
certainly had porphyria. He presents detailed good
reasons to believe that she did and I think she did,
but the DNA tests don't provide positive confirmation
as of what we know of the PPOX gene at this time. I
will search to see if the two more recently foudn
mutatoins by any chance involve region 8.

I am now somewhat confused as to whether McAlpine and
Hunter (who was McAlpine's son and they're both now
dead along with another doctor who helped them),
really had both data on Patient A and Patient B, and
six members of the family of hte Crown Prince of
Hanover, or data and speciments on Patient A who was
an aunt of the Crown Prince of Hanover, a specimen
supposed to have come from the Crown Prince that he
later said came from his wife (who was descended from
George II via the line of Hesse-Cassel), and the
strong but clinically unconfirmed diagnosis made by
two doctors of a member of the Prussian royal family.


I am dead certain I read the words that McAlpine and
Hunt tested six members of the family of the Crown
Prince of Hanover and found four people positve for
VP, but I can't find it in the zeroxed material that I
have, I do have a vaguer statement about four people,
and Rohl et al have a different interpretation of it.
They tried very hard to track down the people McAlpine
and Hunter had identified.

Rohl does present extremely good evidence, complete
with red urine (I think) that Princess Victoria and
her daughter had variegate porphyria, as well as that
Queen Victoria had it, and I already had found pretty
good evidence of that for myself.

Rohl et al also examine in detail good, detailed
reports that William, not Richard, of Gloucester, was
diagnosed by three different doctors as having
variegate porphyria based on his skin condition. Rohl
et al were not able to learn if he had been clinically
tested. They also report on the vague rumors that
Margaret had variegate porphyria, and her health
record, with mysterious illness and migraine
headaches, does support such a suspicion.

There is hope though - and more bones coming. Rohl
said in the interview for the campus newspaper that he
had obtained permission to exhume and test the remains
of James II. I hope they really know these are James
II's bones!

Yours,
Dora

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