title: Revisiting the role of the Himalayas in peopling Nepal: insights from mitochondrial genomes.
abstract: Himalayas was believed to be a formidably geographical barrier between South and East Asia. The observed high frequency of the East Eurasian paternal lineages in Nepal led some researchers to suggest that these lineages were introduced into Nepal from Tibet directly; however, it is also possible that the East Eurasian genetic components might trace their origins to northeast India where abundant East Eurasian maternal lineages have been detected. To trace the origin of the Nepalese maternal genetic components, especially those of East Eurasian ancestry, and then to better understand the role of the Himalayas in peopling Nepal, we have studied the matenal genetic composition extensively, especially the East Eurasian lineages, in Nepalese and its surrounding populations. Our results revealed the closer affinity between the Nepalese and the Tibetans, specifically, the Nepalese lineages of the East Eurasian ancestry generally are phylogenetically closer with the ones from Tibet, albeit a few mitochondrial DNA haplotypes, likely resulted from recent gene flow, were shared between the Nepalese and northeast Indians. It seems that Tibet was most likely to be the homeland for most of the East Eurasian in the Nepalese. Taking into account the previous observation on Y chromosome, now it is convincing that bearer of the East Eurasian genetic components had entered Nepal across the Himalayas around 6 kilo years ago (kya), a scenario in good agreement with the previous results from linguistics and archeology.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Genetic Resources and Evolution, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, Yunnan Province, China.
authors.forename: Hua-Wei
authors.initials: HW
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Yu-Chun
authors.initials: YC
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Fei
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.forename: Mian
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.forename: Bikash
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Mitra
authors.forename: Tapas Kumar
authors.initials: TK
authors.lastname: Chaudhuri
authors.forename: Pasupati
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Regmi
authors.forename: Shi-Fang
authors.initials: SF
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.forename: Qing-Peng
authors.initials: QP
authors.lastname: Kong
authors.forename: Ya-Ping
authors.initials: YP
authors.lastname: Zhang
mesh_terms: D044466:Asian People / Q000235:genetics; D041322:Chromosomes, Human, Y / Q000235:genetics; D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics*; D051456:Gene Flow; D005828:Genetics, Population; D015894:Genome, Human; D054629:Genome, Mitochondrial; D006239:Haplotypes; D006801:Humans; D007194:India; D008928:Mitochondria / Q000235:genetics*; D009390:Nepal; D010802:Phylogeny; D025341:Principal Component Analysis; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D018609:Tibet; D013997:Time Factors
chemical_list: D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial