Jefferson DNA has a possible Jewish link

LONDON, Feb. 28 (UPI) -- British researchers say Thomas Jefferson may have been the first U.S. president with Jewish roots.

Using cells donated by descendants of Jefferson's paternal uncle to determine if Jefferson had fathered children with his slave Sally Hemings, geneticists at the University of Leicester surveyed the lineage of Jefferson's Y chromosome, The New York Times reported.

The report, published in the current issue of The American Journal of Physical Anthropology, says Jefferson's Y chromosome belongs to the branch designated K2, which occurs "in a few men in Spain and Portugal and is most common in the Middle East and eastern Africa," the newspaper said.

Researchers say that raises the possibility that Jefferson had a Jewish ancestor.

University of Arizona geneticist Michael Hammer found that the Jefferson Y chromosome was a perfect match to a Moroccan Jew and closely matched another Moroccan Jew, a Kurdish Jew and an Egyptian.

While Hammer said he would "hazard a guess at Sephardic Jewish ancestry" for Jefferson, he said any such interpretation "was highly tentative," the Times said.