Phylogeography of Sub-Saharan Mitochondrial Lineages Outside Africa Highlights the Roles of the Holocene Climate Changes and the Atlantic Slave Trade.

ABSTRACT: Despite the importance of ancient DNA for understanding human prehistoric dispersals, poor survival means that data remain sparse for many areas in the tropics, including in Africa. In such instances, analysis of contemporary genomes remains invaluable. One promising approach is founder analysis, which identifies and dates migration events in non-recombining systems. However, it has yet to be fully exploited as its application remains controversial. Here, we test the approach by evaluating the age of sub-Saharan mitogenome lineages sampled outside Africa. The analysis confirms that such lineages in the Americas date to recent centuries-the time of the Atlantic slave trade-thereby validating the approach. By contrast, in North Africa, Southwestern Asia and Europe, roughly half of the disper

SUBMITTER: Sa L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9408831 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature