Abstrakt
Ancient mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) has been used in a variety of ancient human population studies. Most of the analyses were based on amplification of short fragments of the mitochondrial HVRI region, cloning and Sanger sequencing.
However, the introduction of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) and the development of capturing methods allow obtaining well covered complete mitochondrial genomes from ancient human samples. Here we present two application approaches of ancient mitogenomics in micro- and macro- scale studies.
The first approach concerns the analyses of complete mitochondrial genomes for reconstructing maternal kinship relations among five individuals from two grave clusters dated to c. 4200BC (middle Neolithic), recovered from Krusza Zamkowa archaeological site in Poland. The second approach involves application of mtDNA to trace the origin and genetic relations of an Iron Age Scythians from present day Moldova with neighboring populations (first study), and genetic relations of Roman Iron Age populations from Kowalewko and Masłomęcz from contemporary Poland with central European societies (second study).
Teeth were used for DNA extraction. The haplotypes of each individual were determined and statistical methods such as PCA, MDS and Network were conducted.
We excluded maternal kinship among the analyzed individuals from the middle Neolithic and proved that whole mtDNA is powerful in tracing direct maternal relationship in ancient sets of individuals. We obtained 19 complete mitochondrial genomes of Scythians which revealed their mixed Asian and east European origin.
We recovered 24 mitogenomes from Kowalewko and Masłomęcz, all being of European origin. We confirmed that complete mitochondrial genomes could be useful not only to trace the origin of ancient populations but also to identify specific lineages which are characteristic for different geographic regions.