Journal article
Ancient Human Genome Sequence of an Extinct Palaeo-Eskimo
We report here the genome sequence of an ancient human. Obtained from approximately 4,000-year-old permafrost-preserved hair, the genome represents a male individual from the first known culture to settle in Greenland. Sequenced to an average depth of 20x, we recover 79% of the diploid genome, an amount close to the practical limit of current sequencing technologies.
We identify 353,151 high-confidence single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), of which 6.8% have not been reported previously. We estimate raw read contamination to be no higher than 0.8%. We use functional SNP assessment to assign possible phenotypic characteristics of the individual that belonged to a culture whose location has yielded only trace human remains.
We compare the high-confidence SNPs to those of contemporary populations to find the populations most closely related to the individual. This provides evidence for a migration from Siberia into the New World some 5,500 years ago, independent of that giving rise to the modern Native Americans and Inuit.
Language: | English |
---|---|
Publisher: | Nature Publishing Group UK |
Year: | 2010 |
Pages: | 757-762 |
Journal subtitle: | International Weekly Journal of Science |
ISSN: | 14764687 and 00280836 |
Types: | Journal article |
DOI: | 10.1038/nature08835 |
ORCIDs: | Gupta, Ramneek , Nielsen, Kasper , 0000-0001-7306-031X , 0000-0001-7052-8554 , 0000-0002-5805-7195 , 0000-0003-1061-9053 , 0000-0002-6353-2819 , 0000-0002-6024-0917 , 0000-0003-2762-1002 , 0000-0003-0316-5866 , 0000-0003-0513-6591 , 0000-0002-5147-6282 and 0000-0002-7081-6748 |