title: Western Eurasian ancestry in modern Siberians based on mitogenomic data.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Although the genetic heritage of aboriginal Siberians is mostly of eastern Asian ancestry, a substantial western Eurasian component is observed in the majority of northern Asian populations. Traces of at least two migrations into southern Siberia, one from eastern Europe and the other from western Asia/the Caucasus have been detected previously in mitochondrial gene pools of modern Siberians.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We report here 166 new complete mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences that allow us to expand and re-analyze the available data sets of western Eurasian lineages found in northern Asian populations, define the phylogenetic status of Siberian-specific subclades and search for links between mtDNA haplotypes/subclades and events of human migrations. From a survey of 158 western Eurasian mtDNA genomes found in Siberia we estimate that nearly 40% of them most likely have western Asian and another 29% European ancestry. It is striking that 65 of northern Asian mitogenomes, i.e. ~41%, fall into 19 branches and subclades which can be considered as Siberian-specific being found so far only in Siberian populations. From the coalescence analysis it is evident that the sequence divergence of Siberian-specific subclades was relatively small, corresponding to only 0.6-9.5 kya (using the complete mtDNA rate) and 1-6 kya (coding region rate).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The phylogeographic analysis implies that the western Eurasian founders, giving rise to Siberian specific subclades, may trace their ancestry only to the early and mid-Holocene, though some of genetic lineages may trace their ancestry back to the end of Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). We have not found the modern northern Asians to have western Eurasian genetic components of sufficient antiquity to indicate traces of pre-LGM expansions.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biological Problems of the North, Russian Academy of Sciences, Magadan, Russia. mderenko@mail.ru.
authors.forename: Miroslava
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Derenko
authors.forename: Boris
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Malyarchuk
authors.forename: Galina
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Denisova
authors.forename: Maria
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Perkova
authors.forename: Andrey
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Litvinov
authors.forename: Tomasz
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Grzybowski
authors.forename: Irina
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Dambueva
authors.forename: Katarzyna
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Skonieczna
authors.forename: Urszula
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Rogalla
authors.forename: Iosif
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Tsybovsky
authors.forename: Ilya
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Zakharov
mesh_terms: D044466:Asian People / Q000235:genetics; D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial / Q000235:genetics*; D005260:Female; D005788:Gene Pool; D005826:Genetics, Medical; D005828:Genetics, Population; D006801:Humans; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010802:Phylogeny; D058974:Phylogeography; D012800:Siberia; D044465:White People / Q000235:genetics
chemical_list: D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial