Using ancient DNA to study the origins and dispersal of ancestral Polynesian chickens across the Pacific.

ABSTRACT: The human colonization of Remote Oceania remains one of the great feats of exploration in history, proceeding east from Asia across the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean. Human commensal and domesticated species were widely transported as part of this diaspora, possibly as far as South America. We sequenced mitochondrial control region DNA from 122 modern and 22 ancient chicken specimens from Polynesia and Island Southeast Asia and used these together with Bayesian modeling methods to examine the human dispersal of chickens across this area. We show that specific techniques are essential to remove contaminating modern DNA from experiments, which appear to have impacted previous studies of Pacific chickens. In contrast to previous reports, we find that all ancient specimens and a high propo

SUBMITTER: Thomson VA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3977275 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature