Dataset Information

Mitochondrial ancestry of medieval individuals carelessly interred in a multiple burial from southeastern Romania.

ABSTRACT: The historical province of Dobruja, located in southeastern Romania, has experienced intense human population movement, invasions, and conflictual episodes during the Middle Ages, being an important intersection point between Asia and Europe. The most informative source of maternal population histories is the complete mitochondrial genome of archaeological specimens, but currently, there is insufficient ancient DNA data available for the medieval period in this geographical region to complement the archaeological findings. In this study, we reconstructed, by using Next Generation Sequencing, the entire mitochondrial genomes (mitogenomes) of six medieval individuals neglectfully buried in a multiple burial from Capidava necropolis (Dobruja), some presenting signs of a violent death. Six distinct maternal lineages (H11a1, U4d2, J1c15, U6a1a1, T2b, and N1a3a) with different phylogenetic background were identified, pointing out the heterogeneous genetic aspect of the analyzed medieval group. Using population genetic analysis based on high-resolution mitochondrial data, we inferred the genetic affinities of the available medieval dataset from Capidava to other ancient Eurasian populations. The genetic data were integrated with the archaeological and anthropological information in order to sketch a small, local piece of the mosaic that is the image of medieval European population history.

SUBMITTER: Rusu I

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6353917 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Mitochondrial ancestry of medieval individuals carelessly interred in a multiple burial from southeastern Romania.

Rusu Ioana I Modi Alessandra A Radu Claudia C Mircea Cristina C Vulpoi Adriana A Dobrinescu Cătălin C Bodolică Vitalie V Potârniche Tiberiu T Popescu Octavian O Caramelli David D Kelemen Beatrice B

Scientific reports 20190130 1

The historical province of Dobruja, located in southeastern Romania, has experienced intense human population movement, invasions, and conflictual episodes during the Middle Ages, being an important intersection point between Asia and Europe. The most informative source of maternal population histories is the complete mitochondrial genome of archaeological specimens, but currently, there is insufficient ancient DNA data available for the medieval period in this geographical region to complement ...[more]

PMID: 30700787

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Project description:In populations that have a high degree of admixture, such as in Brazil, the sole use of ethnicity self-declaration information is not a good method for classifying individuals regarding their ethnicity. Here, we evaluate the relationship of self-declared ethnicities with genomic ancestry and mitochondrial haplogroups in 492 individuals from southeastern Brazil. Mitochondrial haplogroups were obtained by analyzing the hypervariable regions of the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), and the genomic ancestry was obtained using 48 autosomal insertion-deletion ancestry informative markers (AIM). Of the 492 individuals, 74.6% self-declared as White, 13.8% as Brown and 10.4% as Black. Classification of the mtDNA haplogroups showed that 46.3% had African mtDNA, and the genomic ancestry analysis showed that the main contribution was European (57.4%). When we looked at the distribution of mtDNA and genomic ancestry according to the self-declared ethnicities from 367 individuals who self-declared as White, 37.6% showed African mtDNA, and they had a high contribution of European genomic ancestry (63.3%) but also a significant contribution of African ancestry (22.2%). Of the 68 individuals who self-declared as Brown, 25% showed Amerindian mtDNA and similar contribution of European and African genomic ancestries. Of the 51 subjects who self-declared as black, 80.4% had African mtDNA, and the main contribution of genomic ancestry was African (55.6%), but they also had a significant proportion of European ancestry (32.1%). The Brazilian population had a uniform degree of Amerindian genomic ancestry, and it was only with the use of genetic markers (autosomal or mitochondrial) that we were able to capture Amerindian ancestry information. Additionally, it was possible to observe a high degree of heterogeneity in the ancestry for both types of genetic markers, which shows the high genetic admixture that is present in the Brazilian population. We suggest that in epidemiological studies, the use of these methods could provide complementary information.

Dataset Information

Mitochondrial ancestry of medieval individuals carelessly interred in a multiple burial from southeastern Romania.

Publications

Mitochondrial ancestry of medieval individuals carelessly interred in a multiple burial from southeastern Romania.

Similar Datasets

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