Peter Forster

mtDNA Analysis Reveals a Major Late Paleolithic Population Expansion from Southwestern to Northeastern Europe

mtDNA sequence variation was studied in 419 individuals from nine Eurasian populations, by high-resolution RFLP analysis, and it was followed by sequencing of the control region of a subset of these mtDNAs and a detailed survey of previously published data from numerous other European populations. This analysis revealed that a major Paleolithic population expansion from the Atlantic zone (southwestern Europe) occurred 10,000-15,000 years ago, after the Last Glacial Maximum. As an mtDNA marker for this expansion we identified haplogroup V, an autochthonous European haplogroup, which most likely originated in the northern Iberian peninsula or southwestern France at about the time of the Younger Dryas. Its sister haplogroup, H, which is distributed throughout the entire range of Caucasoid populations and which originated in the Near East approximately 25,000-30,000 years ago, also took part in this expansion, thus rendering it by far the most frequent (40%-60%) haplogroup in western Europe. Subsequent migrations after the Younger Dryas eventually carried those Atlantic mtDNAs into central and northern Europe. This scenario, already implied by archaeological records, is given overwhelming support from both the distribution of the autochthonous European Y chromosome type 15, as detected by the probes 49a/f, and the synthetic maps of nuclear data.

mtDNA mutation rates--no need to panic

Readers of the recent paper by Howell et al. (1996) nmight be forgiven for thinking that, after all the controversy nsurrounding the reconstruction of the original mitochondrial ngene trees (e.g., see Maddison 1991; Templeton n1993), the field was once again in difficulties nbecause of (a) a serious underestimation of the mutation nrate by a factor of almost nine and (b) the resulting nmisdating of past divergences. We believe that such an ninterpretation would be unduly pessimistic.

Site 73 in hypervariable region II of the human mitochondrial genome and the origin of European populations

The majority of published human mitochondrial DNA sequence data are confined to hypervariable region I in the control region. By contrast, this paper focusses on a nucleotide site in hypervariable region II. Unlike most non‐European populations whose mtDNA sequences have been studied in the literature, the British ‘white Caucasian’ population has a high level of variation at site 73 (following the site numbering by Anderson et al. 1981). This variation appears to have its origin largely in a mutation from guanine to adenine at that site with an estimated minimum age between 15000 and 25000 years. The data of Piercy et al. (1993) suggest that roughly half of the British ‘white Caucasian’ mitochondrial gene pool is descended from a common maternal ancestor who carried this mutation at site 73. This site also plays a central role in distinguishing the five major European mtDNA clusters identified in Richards et al. (1996). We suggest that the lineages carrying an A at site 73, together with some other lineages, may have their origins in a small founder population which expanded after the last glacial maximum about 20000 years ago. We conclude that, in addition to region I sequences, site 73 is worth determining in studies of Caucasian populations.

Evolutionary network analysis of word lists: Visualising the relationships between alpine romance languages

Abstract The tree model and the wave model of language evolution are united into one geometric network model. A related approach has previously been used for reconstructing DNA evolution, and we now present a network approach for diagnostic word lists of closely related languages. When applied to 17 Alpine Romance languages, the resulting evolutionary network reproduces known linguistic relationships and also fairly accurately reflects the geographic location of each language.

Correction to ‘Elevated germline mutation rate in teenage fathers’

[ Proc. R. Soc. B 282 , 20142898. (22 March 2015; Published online 18 February 2015) ([doi:10.1098/rspb.2014.2898][2])][2]nnIn our recent paper on teenage parents germline mutations [[1][2]], we mentioned that the oldest father in our sample of 11 548 biological fathers was 70 years old at the

On the Genetic Origin of the Turks

Although language and history bear testimony to the migration of Asians to Turkey in mediaeval times, genetic evidence for this event has been elusive. Here we analyse six Y-chromosomal short tandem repeats (STRs) DYS19, DXYs156-Y, DYS390, DYS391, DYS392 and DYS393 for 298 Turks, Germans, Japanese and Chinese using the new median-joining (MJ) phylogenetic network method specifically designed for population DNA genealogies. The Y-Chromosomal results agree with analysis of the mtDNA data for 1,210 Eurasians, indicating about 10% of East Asian genetic input into the population of Turkey.