A revised timescale for human evolution based on ancient mitochondrial genomes - PubMed (original) (raw)

. 2013 Apr 8;23(7):553-559.

doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2013.02.044. Epub 2013 Mar 21.

Alissa Mittnik # 3, Philip L F Johnson 4, Kirsten Bos 3 5, Martina Lari 6, Ruth Bollongino 7, Chengkai Sun 8, Liane Giemsch 9 10, Ralf Schmitz 9, Joachim Burger 7, Anna Maria Ronchitelli 11, Fabio Martini 12, Renata G Cremonesi 13, Jiří Svoboda 14 15, Peter Bauer 16, David Caramelli 6, Sergi Castellano 1, David Reich 17 18, Svante Pääbo 1, Johannes Krause 3

Affiliations

A revised timescale for human evolution based on ancient mitochondrial genomes

Qiaomei Fu et al. Curr Biol. 2013.

Abstract

Background: Recent analyses of de novo DNA mutations in modern humans have suggested a nuclear substitution rate that is approximately half that of previous estimates based on fossil calibration. This result has led to suggestions that major events in human evolution occurred far earlier than previously thought.

Results: Here, we use mitochondrial genome sequences from ten securely dated ancient modern humans spanning 40,000 years as calibration points for the mitochondrial clock, thus yielding a direct estimate of the mitochondrial substitution rate. Our clock yields mitochondrial divergence times that are in agreement with earlier estimates based on calibration points derived from either fossils or archaeological material. In particular, our results imply a separation of non-Africans from the most closely related sub-Saharan African mitochondrial DNAs (haplogroup L3) that occurred less than 62-95 kya.

Conclusions: Though single loci like mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) can only provide biased estimates of population divergence times, they can provide valid upper bounds. Our results exclude most of the older dates for African and non-African population divergences recently suggested by de novo mutation rate estimates in the nuclear genome.

Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1

Figure 1. Tree for 54 present-day humans, 10 ancient modern humans, and 7 archaic humans

The phylogeny in the top panel was constructed using Maximum Parsimony and rooted using midpoint rooting. The branches for present-day humans do not all end at the same point giving a sense of the inherent uncertainty in time measurements based on mtDNA due to its limited sequence span. However, the consistent shortening of the branches of ancient humans relative to their closest present-day human relatives is apparent in the figure. This is the basis for our clock calibration. Pre- and post-Neolithic ancient samples are indicated as red and blue circles, respectively, and colored squares indicate the geographical origin of 54 present-day humans that we co-analyzed with them. Date estimates for major divergence events are shown at the nodes. In the bottom panel we show a map giving geographical origin of the samples.

Similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Scally A, Durbin R. Revising the human mutation rate: implications for understanding human evolution. Nat Rev Genet. 2012;13:745–753. - PubMed
    1. Awadalla P, Gauthier J, Myers RA, Casals F, Hamdan FF, Griffing AR, Cote M, Henrion E, Spiegelman D, Tarabeux J, et al. Direct measure of the de novo mutation rate in autism and schizophrenia cohorts. American journal of human genetics. 2010;87:316–324. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Consortium GP. A map of human genome variation from population-scale sequencing. Nature. 2010;467:1061–1073. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Kong A, Frigge ML, Masson G, Besenbacher S, Sulem P, Magnusson G, Gudjonsson SA, Sigurdsson A, Jonasdottir A, Wong WS, et al. Rate of de novo mutations and the importance of father's age to disease risk. Nature. 2012;488:471–475. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Roach JC, Glusman G, Smit AF, Huff CD, Hubley R, Shannon PT, Rowen L, Pant KP, Goodman N, Bamshad M, et al. Analysis of genetic inheritance in a family quartet by whole-genome sequencing. Science. 2010;328:636–639. - PMC - PubMed

Publication types

MeSH terms

LinkOut - more resources