Sami Genetics
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sami genetic history has been of great interest because of their large genetic distance to other European populations including their closest neighbours. It is mainly the north Sami and east Sami that have been investigated, but lately also the south Sami. There is considerable genetic variation between the different Sami groups but they all share a common ancestry. Female mtDNA especially has been investigated, but also Y chromosomes and classical autosomal markers.
Contents |
[edit] Sami mtDNA
The Sami people mtDNA haplogroup distribution strongly deviate from the distribution of other European countries including their closest neightbours. The European haplogroup Velda - V and Ursula - U5b1 stands for 89.2% of the total haplogroups among the Sami people. These haplogroups occur at a low rate in European populations except for haplogroup V among the Basque people in Iberian Peninsula (12.4%) and Mari people in Volga-Ural (10.2%). Further almost 50% of haplogroup U5b1 haplotypes are unique for the Sami people population and do not occur elsewhere, while most of the haplogroup V haplotypes is also seen among other European populations. Its believed on the basis of correlation analysis that haplogroup V and U5b1 migrated togheter with male haplogroup I1a (Rootsi 2004) and on the basis of variance and haplotype analysis its believed they migrated from western Europe. The age of haplogroup V and U5b1 among the Sami is believed to be between 5 800 to 11 000 years old (Delghandi 1998, Ingman 2006).
[edit] Sami Y-chromosome
Sami Y chromosomes haplogroup distribution is similar to the Finns and Estonians with haplogroup I1a, N3 and R1a as major haplogroups. Haplogroup I1a is common among among all neightbouring populations. Haplogroup N3 is common among the Finns, while haplogroup R1a is common among all the neightbours except the Finns. Haplogroup R1a in Sami is mostly seen in the Swedish Sami and Kola Sami populations (Tambets 2004). However a analysis of the microsatelites substructure of haplogroup I1a and N3 among the east-sami reveals that Finns and Estonians are a unlikely source of recent contributions. (Raitio 2001).
[edit] Sami Autosomal
The autosomal classic markers shows that the Sami have no close relatives in any population but are in general more closely related to Europeans than people of other continents (Cavalli-Sforza 1994, Niskanen 2002). The closest of the distant relatives are Finnish people, but this is probably due to more recent immigration of Finnish people into the Sami areas, and the assimilation of the Sami population into the mainstream population in todays Finland (Meinila 2001).
The Sami are no more closely related to the Siberian and Mongol populations than other European populations (Niskanen 2002), in contrast to the historically held view that the Sami are of Siberian-Asiatic origin. The genetic distances between the Sami and the rest of the world are due to founder effects and genetic drift resulting from their small and isolated population.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Saami Mitochondrial DNA Reveals Deep Maternal Lineage Clusters, Delghandi 1998
- The Origin of the Baltic-Finns from the Physical Anthropological Point of View, Niskanen 2002
- The Western and Eastern Roots of the Saami—the Story of Genetic “Outliers” Told by Mitochondrial DNA and Y Chromosomes, Tambets 2004
- Saami and Berbers—An Unexpected Mitochondrial DNA Link, Achilli 2005
- A recent genetic link between Sami and the Volga-Ural region of Russia, Ingman 2006
