3 documents found, page 1 of 1
The dawn of human matrilineal diversity
Behar, DM; Villems, R; Soodyall, H; Blue-Smith, J; Pereira, L; Metspalu, E; Scozzari, R; Makkan, H; Tzur, S; Comas, D; Bertranpetit, JThe quest to explain demographic history during the early part of human evolution has been limited because of the scarce paleoanthropological record from the Middle Stone Age. To shed light on the structure of the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) phylogeny at the dawn of Homo sapiens, we constructed a matrilineal tree composed of 624 complete mtDNA genomes from sub-Saharan Hg L lineages. We paid particular attention t...
Counting the founders: the matrilineal genetic ancestry of the Jewish Diaspora
Behar, DM; Metspalu, E; Kivisild, T; Rosset, S; Tzur, S; Hadid, Y; Yudkovsky, G; Rosengarten, D; Pereira, L; Amorim, A; Kutuev, I; Gurwitz, DThe history of the Jewish Diaspora dates back to the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests in the Levant, followed by complex demographic and migratory trajectories over the ensuing millennia which pose a serious challenge to unraveling population genetic patterns. Here we ask whether phylogenetic analysis, based on highly resolved mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) phylogenies can discern among maternal ancestries of the D...
The Matrilineal Ancestry of Ashkenazi Jewry: Portrait of a Recent Founder Event
Behar, DM; Metspalu, E; Kivisild, T; Achilli, A; Hadid, Y; Tzur, S; Pereira, L; Amorim, A; Quintana-Murci, L; Majamaa, K; Herrnstadt, C; Howell, NBoth the extent and location of the maternal ancestral deme from which the Ashkenazi Jewry arose remain obscure. Here, using complete sequences of the maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), we show that close to one-half of Ashkenazi Jews, estimated at 8,000,000 people, can be traced back to only 4 women carrying distinct mtDNAs that are virtually absent in other populations, with the important excepti...