Mitochondrial DNA signals of Late Glacial recolonization of Europe from Near Eastern refugia

Human populations, along with those of many other species, are thought to have contracted into a number of refuge areas at the height of the last Ice Age. European populations are believed to be, to a large extent, the descendants of the inhabitants of these refugia, and some extant mtDNA lineages c...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Pala, M (author)
Other Authors: Olivieri, A (author), Achilli, A (author), Accetturo, M (author), Metspalu, E (author), Reidla, M (author), Tamm, E (author), Karmin, M (author), Reisberg, T (author), Hooshiar Kashani, B (author), Perego, UA (author), Carossa, V (author), Gandini, F (author), Pereira, JB (author), Soares, P (author), Angerhofer, N (author), Rychkov, S (author), Al-Zahery, N (author), Carelli, V (author), Hossein Sanati, M (author), Houshmand, M (author), Hatina, J (author), Macaulay, V (author), Pereira, L (author), Woodward, SR (author), Davies, W (author), Gamble, C (author), Baird, D (author), Semino, O (author), Villems, R (author), Torroni, A (author), Richards, MB (author)
Format: article
Language:eng
Published: 2012
Subjects:
DNA Mitochondrial/genetics
DNA Mitochondrial/metabolism
Europe Eastern/epidemiology
European Continental Ancestry Group/genetics
Genetic Variation
Genetics, Population
Humans
Middle East
Mitochondria/genetics
Molecular Sequence Data
Phylogeny
Sequence Analysis DNA
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10216/109608
Country:Portugal
Oai:oai:repositorio-aberto.up.pt:10216/109608
Description
Summary:Human populations, along with those of many other species, are thought to have contracted into a number of refuge areas at the height of the last Ice Age. European populations are believed to be, to a large extent, the descendants of the inhabitants of these refugia, and some extant mtDNA lineages can be traced to refugia in Franco-Cantabria (haplogroups H1, H3, V, and U5b1), the Italian Peninsula (U5b3), and the East European Plain (U4 and U5a). Parts of the Near East, such as the Levant, were also continuously inhabited throughout the Last Glacial Maximum, but unlike western and eastern Europe, no archaeological or genetic evidence for Late Glacial expansions into Europe from the Near East has hitherto been discovered. Here we report, on the basis of an enlarged whole-genome mitochondrial database, that a substantial, perhaps predominant, signal from mitochondrial haplogroups J and T, previously thought to have spread primarily from the Near East into Europe with the Neolithic population, may in fact reflect dispersals during the Late Glacial period, ∼19-12 thousand years (ka) ago.

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