Tag: mitogenomes

Biparental inheritance of mitochondrial DNA in humans

mtdna-inheritance-paternal

New paper Biparental Inheritance of Mitochondrial DNA in Humans, by Luo et al. PNAS (2018).

Interesting excerpts (emphasis mine):

Abstract

Although there has been considerable debate about whether paternal mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) transmission may coexist with maternal transmission of mtDNA, it is generally believed that mitochondria and mtDNA are exclusively maternally inherited in humans. Here, we identified three unrelated multigeneration families with a high level of mtDNA heteroplasmy (ranging from 24 to 76%) in a total of 17 individuals. Heteroplasmy of mtDNA was independently examined by high-depth whole mtDNA sequencing analysis in our research laboratory and in two Clinical

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The Iron Age expansion of Southern Siberian groups and ancestry with Scythians

iron_age-sarmatians

Maternal genetic features of the Iron Age Tagar population from Southern Siberia (1st millennium BC), by Pilipenko et al. (2018).

Interesting excerpts (emphasis mine):

The positions of non-Tagar Iron Age groups in the MDS plot were correlated with their geographic position within the Eurasian steppe belt and with frequencies of Western and Eastern Eurasian mtDNA lineages in their gene pools. Series from chronological Tagar stages (similar to the overall Tagar series) were located within the genetic variability (in terms of mtDNA) of Scythian World nomadic groups (Figs 5 and 6; S4 and S6 Tables). Specifically, the Early Tagar series

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Global demographic history inferred from mitogenomes

Open access Global demographic history of human populations inferred from whole mitochondrial genomes, by Miller, Manica, and Amos, Royal Society Open Science (2018).

Relevant excerpts (emphasis mine):

Material

The Phase 3 sequence data from 20 populations, comprising five populations for each of the four main geographical regions of Europe, East Asia, South Asia and Africa, were downloaded from the 1000 Genomes Project website (www.1000genomes.org/data, [8]), including whole mitochondrial genome data for 1999 individuals. We decided not to analyse populations from the Americas due to the region’s complex history of admixture [13,14].

The European populations were as follows: Finnish sampled

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