The sequencing of entire human mitochondrial DNAs belonging to haplogroup U reveals that this clade arose shortly after the “out of Africa ” exit and rapidly radiated into numerous regionally distinct subclades. Intriguingly, the Saami of Scandinavia and the Berbers of North Africa were found to sha...
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| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
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2005
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| Online Access: | http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.583.6890 http://class.csueastbay.edu/faculty/gmiller/3710/DNA_PDFS/mtDNA/mtDNA_SaamiBerber.pdf |
| Summary: | The sequencing of entire human mitochondrial DNAs belonging to haplogroup U reveals that this clade arose shortly after the “out of Africa ” exit and rapidly radiated into numerous regionally distinct subclades. Intriguingly, the Saami of Scandinavia and the Berbers of North Africa were found to share an extremely young branch, aged merely ∼9,000 years. This unexpected finding not only confirms that the Franco-Cantabrian refuge area of south-western Europe was the source of late-glacial expansions of hunter-gatherers that repopulated northern Europe after the Last Glacial Maximum but also reveals a direct maternal link between those European hunter-gatherer populations and the Berbers. Because of maternal transmission and lack of recom-bination, the sequence differentiation of human mtDNA has been generated by only the sequential accumulation of new mutations along radiating maternal lineages. Over the course of time, this process of molecular di-vergence has given rise to monophyletic units that are called “haplogroups. ” Because this process of molecular differentiation occurred mainly during and after the pro-cess of human colonization of and diffusion into the different continents and regions, haplogroups and sub-haplogroups tend to be restricted to specific geographic areas and population groups (Wallace 1995; Achilli et al. 2004). Only the founders of the sister superhaplogroups M and N (which includes haplogroup R) (Quintana-Murci et al. 1999) participated in the “out of Africa ” exit |
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