Native American Populations Share Gene Signature

New Scientist ^ | 2-14-2007 | Roxanne Khamsi

[blam]

Native American populations share gene signature

00:01 14 February 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Roxanne Khamsi

A distinctive, repeating sequence of DNA found in people living at the eastern edge of Russia is also widespread among Native Americans, according to a new study.

The finding lends support to the idea that Native Americans descended from a common founding population that lived near the Bering land bridge for some time.

Kari Schroeder at the University of California in Davis, US, and colleagues sampled the genes from various populations around the globe, including two at the eastern edge of Siberia, 53 elsewhere in Asia and 18 Native American populations. The study examined samples from roughly 1500 people in total, including 445 Native Americans.

The team looked for a series of nine repeating chunks of DNA, known as 9RA, which falls in a non-coding region of chromosome 9.

They found the 9RA sequence in at least one member of all the Native American populations tested, such as the Cherokee and Apache people. The two populations in eastern Siberia, where the Bering land bridge once connected Asia to North America, also tested positive for the 9RA sequence.

The 9RA sequence did not appear in any of the other Asian populations examined in the study, including those from other parts of Siberia, from Mongolia or Japan.

Multiple migrations?

According to Schroeder, the high prevalence of this gene marker among native populations of North and South America - and its absence in most of Asia - lends strong support to the idea that Native Americans can trace their ancestry to a common founding population.

[blam]

GGG Ping.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

genetic genealogy ping?

[VOA]

bump

[blam]

Journey Of Mankind

[Vaquero]

"...oh the thought of ancestors brings a tear to my eye....Im a what?????...a Sicilian?????"

[cherry]

IOWS.....they CAME to this country just like everybody else.......did they kill fish and deer to survive?

....put edible plants in the ground?.

..fight off bear and other malicious animals?.

....build protection from the weather?.

....burn wood for fuel?.

..

sounds like Puritans and Pilgrims to me...

[Young Werther]

EVE!

The holder of this title is believed by some to have lived about 140,000 years ago in what is now Ethiopia, Kenya or Tanzania. The time she lived is calculated based on the molecular clock technique of correlating elapsed time with observed genetic drift.

Mitochondrial Eve is the most recent common ancestor of all human via the mitochondrial DNA pathway, not the unqualified MRCA of all humanity. All living humans can trace their ancestry back to the MRCA via at least one of their parents, but Mitochondrial Eve can only be reached via the maternal line. Therefore, she necessarily lived much longer ago than the MRCA of all humanity.

If she is everyone's great great Grandmother, many centuries removed, then we're all cousins and AFRICAN-Whatevers!!!

[Old Professer]

Blood-thirsty savages?

[An Old NCO]

This could explain the failure of Indian Tribal governments as well.

[blam]

Brian Sykes, the author of "Seven Daughters Of Eve," now says that he should have had eight daughters.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Blam.

its absence in most of Asia

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
"Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list or GGG weekly digest
-- Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

[OrangeDaisy]

A scientific writer, editor or proofreader that can't spell.

The 9RA mutation probably occurred in an ancestral population located at the eastern edge of Siberia, which subsequently migrated over the Bering land bridge, Schroeder says (watch how the land bridge was gradually submerged as see levels rose).

[CholeraJoe]

But what about the red-haired, blue-eyed Indians who spoke Welsh?

[martin_fierro]

	Genetic Genealogy
Send FReepmail if you want on/off GGP list Marty = Paternal Haplogroup O(2?)(M175) Maternal Haplogroup H
GG LINKS: African Ancestry DNAPrint Genomics FamilyTree DNA mitosearch Nat'l Geographic Genographic Project Oxford Ancestors RelativeGenetics Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation Trace Genetics ybase ysearch
The List of Ping Lists

[RJS1950]

Solutrian migration.

[Eva]

I'm not confident that our native American populations are any longer distinct from one another, at least not in the west. Due to the requirement that reservations maintain a certain size population to remain an official reservation, our local reservation takes in anyone with any type of Indian family history, including Mexican Indians.

[Knitting A Conundrum]

OK, blam, you caught me lost in the Journey of Mankind for maybe the 4th time...LOL! It's such a good site.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

Plus, there has been a large amount of admixture with European and African descent populations.

[Eva]

The average percentage of native blood on the reservation is very small indeed. I suspect that is the reason for accepting Mexican Indians. I think that the percentage of native blood may be higher.