The genealogical study of Genghis Khan’s Golden family is always a focus of associated disciplines. Yi Liu’s commentary on our article entitled “Molecular genealogy of Tusi Lu’s family reveals their paternal relationship with Jochi, Genghis Khan’s eldest son” provides a good opportunity to discuss the detailed relationships between the genetic study and historical study based on this issue. We believe that interdisciplinary discussions between geneticists and historians like this one will help us to better understand the molecular findings, especially the paternal genetic link between the Tusi (Chief) Lu’s family from northwestern China and the Tore clan from Kazakhstan.

In our previous molecular genealogical investigation [1], we found that the modal haplotype of Tusi Lu’s family is 15-12-16-24-10-11-13-14-11-12-15-17-22-11-12-14 (the loci order DYS19-389I-389b-390-391-392-393-437-438-439-448-456-458-635-H4-385a-385b). After comparing the Y-haplotypes of the Lu clan, which belong to Haplogroup C2b1a1b1-F1756, with all available relevant haplotypes which we collected from the literature, we found that these haplotypes are closely related to the Tore clan haplotypes (within 3–5 step difference) drawn from the Kazakhstan DNA project. Based on these findings, genealogical records or family memory can provide useful information for testing our hypothesis that since the Lu clan and Tore clan both claim to be the descendants of the sixth son (Khulgen) and the first son (Jochi) of Genghis Khan, respectively, and therefore, the haplogroup C2b1a1b1-F1756 might be a candidate of the true Y lineage of Genghis Khan.

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