title: Counting the founders: the matrilineal genetic ancestry of the Jewish Diaspora.
abstract: The 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 Diaspora. Accordingly, 1,142 samples from 14 different non-Ashkenazi Jewish communities were analyzed. A list of complete mtDNA sequences was established for all variants present at high frequency in the communities studied, along with high-resolution genotyping of all samples. Unlike the previously reported pattern observed among Ashkenazi Jews, the numerically major portion of the non-Ashkenazi Jews, currently estimated at 5 million people and comprised of the Moroccan, Iraqi, Iranian and Iberian Exile Jewish communities showed no evidence for a narrow founder effect, which did however characterize the smaller and more remote Belmonte, Indian and the two Caucasus communities. The Indian and Ethiopian Jewish sample sets suggested local female introgression, while mtDNAs in all other communities studied belong to a well-characterized West Eurasian pool of maternal lineages. Absence of sub-Saharan African mtDNA lineages among the North African Jewish communities suggests negligible or low level of admixture with females of the host populations among whom the African haplogroup (Hg) L0-L3 sub-clades variants are common. In contrast, the North African and Iberian Exile Jewish communities show influence of putative Iberian admixture as documented by mtDNA Hg HV0 variants. These findings highlight striking differences in the demographic history of the widespread Jewish Diaspora.
authors.affiliation: Molecular Medicine Laboratory, Rambam Health Care Campus, Haifa, Israel.
authors.forename: Doron M
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Behar
authors.forename: Ene
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Metspalu
authors.forename: Toomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Kivisild
authors.forename: Saharon
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Rosset
authors.forename: Shay
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Tzur
authors.forename: Yarin
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Hadid
authors.forename: Guennady
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Yudkovsky
authors.forename: Dror
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Rosengarten
authors.forename: Luisa
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Pereira
authors.forename: Antonio
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Amorim
authors.forename: Ildus
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Kutuev
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Gurwitz
authors.forename: Batsheva
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Bonne-Tamir
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Villems
authors.forename: Karl
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Skorecki
mesh_terms: D001483:Base Sequence; D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial / Q000235:genetics; D004641:Emigration and Immigration; D018703:Founder Effect; D005789:Genealogy and Heraldry; D006801:Humans; D007585:Jews / Q000235:genetics*; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009035:Mothers; D010802:Phylogeny; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA
chemical_list: D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial