Two Sources of the Russian Patrilineal Heritage in Their Eurasian Context

Progress in the mapping of population genetic substructure provides a core source of data for the reconstruction of the demographic history of our species and for the discovery of common signals relevant to disease research: These two aspects of enquiry overlap in their empirical data content and ar...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:American journal of human genetics 2008-01, Vol.82 (1), p.236-250
Main Authors: Balanovsky, Oleg, Rootsi, Siiri, Pshenichnov, Andrey, Kivisild, Toomas, Churnosov, Michail, Evseeva, Irina, Pocheshkhova, Elvira, Boldyreva, Margarita, Yankovsky, Nikolay, Balanovska, Elena, Villems, Richard
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Asian People - genetics
Biological variation
Chromosomes
Chromosomes, Human, Y
Ethnicity
Genetics
Genetics, Population
Humans
Population genetics
Russia
White People - genetics
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Summary:Progress in the mapping of population genetic substructure provides a core source of data for the reconstruction of the demographic history of our species and for the discovery of common signals relevant to disease research: These two aspects of enquiry overlap in their empirical data content and are especially informative at continental and subcontinental levels. In the present study of the variation of the Y chromosome pool of ethnic Russians, we show that the patrilineages within the pre-Ivan the Terrible historic borders of Russia have two main distinct sources. One of these antedates the linguistic split between West and East Slavonic-speaking people and is common for the two groups; the other is genetically highlighted by the pre-eminence of haplogroup (hg) N3 and is most parsimoniously explained by extensive assimilation of (or language change in) northeastern indigenous Finno-Ugric tribes. Although hg N3 is common for both East European and Siberian Y chromosomes, other typically Siberian or Mongolian hgs (Q and C) have negligible influence within the studied Russian Y chromosome pool. The distribution of all frequent Y chromosome haplogroups (which account for 95% of the Y chromosomal spectrum in Russians) follows a similar north-south clinal pattern among autosomal markers, apparent from synthetic maps. Multidimensional scaling (MDS) plots comparing intra ethnic and interethnic variation of Y chromosome in Europe show that although well detectable, intraethnic variation signals do not cross interethnic borders, except between Poles, Ukrainians, and central-southern Russians, thereby revealing their overwhelmingly shared patrilineal ancestry.
ISSN:0002-9297
1537-6605
DOI:10.1016/j.ajhg.2007.09.019