Yemen, in the southwestern corner of Arabian peninsula, lies at the crossroads between Africa and Eurasia. Genomes of present-day Yemenis were inherited from their progenitors, and may attest to the history of the region. Molecules of DNA... more
Yemen, in the southwestern corner of Arabian peninsula, lies at the crossroads between Africa and Eurasia. Genomes of present-day Yemenis were inherited from their progenitors, and may attest to the history of the region. Molecules of DNA can, therefore, shed light on how busy this crossroads was during the past millennia. Unfortunately, Yemeni populations have been neglected in genetic literature
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Research Interests: Genetics, Genetic Drift, East Africa, Population Dynamics, Biodiversity, and 23 moreMultidisciplinary, Czech Republic, Compositional Analysis, Phylogeny, Population structure, Mitochondrial DNA, North Africa, Population History, Animals, Time of Flight, Effective Population Size, PLoS one, High Resolution, Genotype, Single Nucleotide Polymorphism, Ethnic Group, Fresh water, Very high throughput, Demographic History, Population Study, Genome sequence, Point of View, and Bayesian framework
Research Interests: Evolutionary Biology, Genetics, Demography, Molecular Biology, Population Genetics, and 11 moreAfrica, Molecular Evolution, Climate, Phylogeny, Mitochondrial DNA, Humans, Haplotypes, Molecular biology and evolution, Last Glacial Maximum, International Diversification, and Biochemistry and cell biology
Despite the numerous studies proposing early human population expansions from Africa into Arabia during the Late Pleistocene, no archaeological sites have yet been discovered in Arabia that resemble a specific African industry, which... more
Despite the numerous studies proposing early human population expansions from Africa into Arabia during the Late Pleistocene, no archaeological sites have yet been discovered in Arabia that resemble a specific African industry, which would indicate demographic exchange across the Red Sea. Here we report the discovery of a buried site and more than 100 new surface scatters in the Dhofar region of Oman belonging to a regionally-specific African lithic industry - the late Nubian Complex - known previously only from the northeast and Horn of Africa during Marine Isotope Stage 5, ,128,000 to 74,000 years ago. Two optically stimulated luminescence age estimates from the open-air site of Aybut Al Auwal in Oman place the Arabian Nubian Complex at ,106,000 years ago, providing archaeological evidence for the presence of a distinct northeast African Middle Stone Age technocomplex in southern Arabia sometime in the first half of Marine Isotope Stage 5.
Research Interests: Prehistoric Archaeology, Human Evolution, Climate Change Adaptation, Palaeolithic Archaeology, Migration, and 12 moreMigration Studies, Migrations (Archaeology), Modern human origins, Paleolithic art, rock art, Northeast African Prehistory (Prehistoric Archaeology), Middle Palaeolithic, Oman, Human Origins, Arabian/Persian Gulf Archaeology, Middle Stone Age, Levallois, South Arabian Archaeology, and Dhofar
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Analysis of the mitochondrial DNA variation in populations is commonly carried out in many fields of biomedical research. We propose the analysis of mitochondrial DNA coding region SNP (mtSNP) variation to a high level of phylogenetic... more
Analysis of the mitochondrial DNA variation in populations is commonly carried out in many fields of biomedical research. We propose the analysis of mitochondrial DNA coding region SNP (mtSNP) variation to a high level of phylogenetic resolution based on MALDI-TOF MS. The African phylogeny has been chosen to test the applicability of the technique but any other part of the worldwide phylogeny (or any other mtSNP panel) could be equally suitable for MALDI-TOF MS genotyping. SNP selection thus aimed to fully cover all the mtSNPs defining major and minor branches of the known African tree, including, macro-haplogroup L, and haplogroups M1, and U6. A total of 230 mtSNPs were finally selected. We used tests samples collected from two different African locations, namely, Mozambique and Chad Basin. Different internal genotyping controls and other indirect approaches (e.g. phylogenetic checking coupled with automatic sequencing) were used in order to evaluate the reproducibility of the technique, which resulted to be 100% using samples previously subjected to whole genome amplification. The advantages of the MALDI-TOF MS are also discussed in comparison with other popular methods such as minisequencing, highlighting its high-throughput nature, which is particularly suitable for case-control medical studies, forensic databasing or population and anthropological studies.
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No mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences from Chadic-speaking peoples have yet been reported, even though these populations inhabit a vast territory from eastern Nigeria to central Chad. This paper deals with the mtDNA sequences of four... more
No mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences from Chadic-speaking peoples have yet been reported, even though these populations inhabit a vast territory from eastern Nigeria to central Chad. This paper deals with the mtDNA sequences of four Central Chadic populations (Hide, Kotoko, Mafa and Masa) from northern Cameroon, biological samples from which were collected during anthropological research in the area of their homeland. The main goals of this article are to report new mtDNA sequences of Chadic-speaking populations, to analyse their genetic diversity and to establish their relationships within the peri-Saharan area in respect of geography and languages. The analyses are based on 104 mtDNA haplotypes, which can be localized into four different areas of northern Cameroon. Data collection was based on a strict geographical sampling strategy; the ethnonyms are retained here only for comparative purposes. None of the examined Chadic populations displays a departure from the normal mismatch distribution pattern, and the null hypothesis of the expansion event cannot be rejected. Analyses of molecular variance and F(ST) genetic distances revealed that the Chadic-speaking groups of northern Cameroon share more similarities with the populations of the Upper and Middle Nile Valley and East Africa than with populations from Central Africa. The results show geographical clustering to be more important than the correlation of linguistic affiliations with molecular genetic data. The observation that the Chadic group reveals some affinities to East Africans is extremely surprising giving the present-day geographical distance (around 2000 km) between them. These observations complement recent linguistic and archaeological findings, which consider the Chadic branch in the Afro-Asiatic phylum to be of eastern origin. A continuous, well-defined, geographic sampling strategy of the different genetic polymorphisms of the native populations of sub-Saharan Africa is further needed as the only way of understanding the differentiation of the mtDNA sequences at a micro-regional scale.