title: Beringian standstill and spread of Native American founders.
abstract: Native Americans derive from a small number of Asian founders who likely arrived to the Americas via Beringia. However, additional details about the initial colonization of the Americas remain unclear. To investigate the pioneering phase in the Americas we analyzed a total of 623 complete mtDNAs from the Americas and Asia, including 20 new complete mtDNAs from the Americas and seven from Asia. This sequence data was used to direct high-resolution genotyping from 20 American and 26 Asian populations. Here we describe more genetic diversity within the founder population than was previously reported. The newly resolved phylogenetic structure suggests that ancestors of Native Americans paused when they reached Beringia, during which time New World founder lineages differentiated from their Asian sister-clades. This pause in movement was followed by a swift migration southward that distributed the founder types all the way to South America. The data also suggest more recent bi-directional gene flow between Siberia and the North American Arctic.
authors.affiliation: Department of Evolutionary Biology, University of Tartu, Estonian Biocentre, Tartu, Estonia.
authors.forename: Erika
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Tamm
authors.forename: Toomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Kivisild
authors.forename: Maere
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Reidla
authors.forename: Mait
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Metspalu
authors.forename: David Glenn
authors.initials: DG
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.forename: Connie J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Mulligan
authors.forename: Claudio M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Bravi
authors.forename: Olga
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Rickards
authors.forename: Cristina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Martinez-Labarga
authors.forename: Elsa K
authors.initials: EK
authors.lastname: Khusnutdinova
authors.forename: Sardana A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Fedorova
authors.forename: Maria V
authors.initials: MV
authors.lastname: Golubenko
authors.forename: Vadim A
authors.initials: VA
authors.lastname: Stepanov
authors.forename: Marina A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Gubina
authors.forename: Sergey I
authors.initials: SI
authors.lastname: Zhadanov
authors.forename: Ludmila P
authors.initials: LP
authors.lastname: Ossipova
authors.forename: Larisa
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Damba
authors.forename: Mikhail I
authors.initials: MI
authors.lastname: Voevoda
authors.forename: Jose E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Dipierri
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Villems
authors.forename: Ripan S
authors.initials: RS
authors.lastname: Malhi
mesh_terms: D001208:Asia; D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial / Q000235:genetics*; D005838:Genotype; D006239:Haplotypes; D006801:Humans; D007198:Indians, North American; D009154:Mutation; D010802:Phylogeny