title: Forensic and phylogeographic characterisation of mtDNA lineages from Somalia.
abstract: The African mitochondrial (mt) phylogeny is coarsely resolved but the majority of population data generated so far is limited to the analysis of the first hypervariable segment (HVS-1) of the control region (CR). Therefore, this study aimed on the investigation of the entire CR of 190 unrelated Somali individuals to enrich the severely underrepresented African mtDNA pool. The majority (60.5 %) of the haplotypes were of sub-Saharan origin with L0a1d, L2a1h and L3f being the most frequently observed haplogroups. This is in sharp contrast to previous data reported from the Y-chromosome, where only about 5 % of the observed haplogroups were of sub-Saharan provenance. We compared the genetic distances based on population pairwise F                         (st) values between 11 published East, Central and North African as well as western Asian populations and the Somali sequences and displayed them in a multi-dimensional scaling plot. Genetic proximity evidenced by clustering roughly reflected the relative geographic location of the populations. The sequences will be included in the EMPOP database (                            www.empop.org                                                     ) under accession number EMP00397 upon publication (Parson and Dür Forensic Sci Int Genet 1:88-92, 2007).
authors.affiliation: Section of Forensic Genetics, Department of Forensic Medicine, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Mikkelsen
authors.forename: Liane
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Fendt
authors.forename: Alexander W
authors.initials: AW
authors.lastname: Röck
authors.forename: Bettina
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Zimmermann
authors.forename: Eszter
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Rockenbauer
authors.forename: Anders J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Hansen
authors.forename: Walther
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Parson
authors.forename: Niels
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Morling
mesh_terms: D044383:Black People / Q000235:genetics*; D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial / Q000235:genetics*; D005828:Genetics, Population; D006239:Haplotypes; D006801:Humans; D016013:Likelihood Functions; D018895:Microsatellite Repeats; D010802:Phylogeny; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D012998:Somalia
chemical_list: D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial