The matrilineal ancestry of Ashkenazi Jewry: portrait of a recent founder event.
Both 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 exception of low frequencies among non-Ashkenazi Jews. We conclude that four founding mtDNAs, likely of Near Eastern ancestry, underwent major expansion(s) in Europe within the past millennium.
Behar
Doron M
DM
Rappaport Faculty of Medicine and Research Institute, Technion and Rambam Medical Center, Haifa, Israel.
Metspalu
Ene
E
Kivisild
Toomas
T
Achilli
Alessandro
A
Hadid
Yarin
Y
Tzur
Shay
S
Pereira
Luisa
L
Amorim
Antonio
A
Quintana-Murci
Lluis
L
Majamaa
Kari
K
Herrnstadt
Corinna
C
Howell
Neil
N
Balanovsky
Oleg
O
Kutuev
Ildus
I
Pshenichnov
Andrey
A
Gurwitz
David
D
Bonne-Tamir
Batsheva
B
Torroni
Antonio
A
Villems
Richard
R
Skorecki
Karl
K
D001483:Base Sequence; D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial / Q000235:genetics*; D005260:Female; D018703:Founder Effect; D006801:Humans; D007585:Jews / Q000145:classification* / Q000208:ethnology* / Q000235:genetics; D008297:Male; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010802:Phylogeny
D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial