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F A Kaestle

Publications and source records attributed to F A Kaestle.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

Ancient mitochondrial DNA evidence for prehistoric population movement: the Numic expansion.

The mitochondrial DNA of modern Native Americans has been shown to fall into one of at least five haplogroups (A, B, C, D, or X) whose frequencies differ among tribal groups. The frequencies of these five haplogroups in a collection of ancient individuals from Western Nevada dating to between approximately 350-9,200 years BP were determined. These data were used to test the hypothesis, supported by archaeological and linguistic data, that the current inhabitants of the Great Basin, the Numic speakers, are recent immigrants into the area who replaced the previous non-Numic inhabitants. The frequency distributions of haplogroups in the ancient and modern Native Americans differed significantly, suggesting that there is a genetic discontinuity between the ancient inhabitants and the modern Numic speakers, providing further support for the Recent Numic Expansion hypothesis. The distribution of mitochondrial haplogroups of the ancient inhabitants of the Great Basin is most similar to those of some of the modern Native American inhabitants of California.

Anthropology, Physical↗

Distribution of mtDNA haplogroup X among Native North Americans.

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) samples of 70 Native Americans, most of whom had been found not to belong to any of the four common Native American haplogroups (A, B, C, and D), were analyzed for the presence of Dde I site losses at np 1715 and np 10394. These two mutations are characteristic of haplogroup X which might be of European origin. The first hypervariable segment (HVSI) of the non-coding control region (CR) of mtDNA of a representative selection of samples exhibiting these mutations was sequenced to confirm their assignment to haplogroup X. Thirty-two of the samples exhibited the restriction site losses characteristic of haplogroup X and, when sequenced, a representative selection (n = 11) of these exhibited the CR mutations commonly associated with haplogroup X, C --> T transitions at np 16278 and 16223, in addition to as many as three other HVSI mutations. The wide distribution of this haplogroup throughout North America, and its prehistoric presence there, are consistent with its being a fifth founding haplogroup exhibited by about 3% of modern Native Americans. Its markedly nonrandom distribution with high frequency in certain regions, as for the other four major mtDNA haplogroups, should facilitate establishing ancestor/descendant relationships between modern and prehistoric groups of Native Americans. The low frequency of haplogroups other than A, B, C, D, and X among the samples studied suggests a paucity of both recent non-Native American maternal admixture in alleged fullblood Native Americans and mutations at the restriction sites that characterize the five haplogroups as well as the absence of additional (undiscovered) founding haplogroups.

Adult↗