Mitogenome Diversity in Sardinians: a Genetic Window onto an Island's Past

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https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/2977388/Mitogenome

Mitogenome Diversity in Sardinians: a Genetic Window onto an Island's Past

Anna Olivieri, Carlo Sidore, 1lessandro Achilli, Andrea Angius, Cosimo Posth, Anja Furtwängler, Stefania Brandini, Marco Rosario Capodiferro, Francesca Gandini, Magdalena Zoledziewska, Maristella Pitzalis, Andrea Maschio, Fabio Busonero, Luca Lai, Robin Skeates, Maria Giuseppina Gradoli, Jessica Beckett, Michele Marongiu, Vittorio Mazzarello, Patrizia Marongiu, Salvatore Rubino, Teresa Rito, Vincent Macaulay, Ornella Semino, Maria Pala, Gonçalo R. Abecasis, David Schlessinger, Eduardo Conde-Sousa, Pedro Soares
Martin B. Richards, Francesco Cucca, Antonio Torroni

Mol Biol Evol msx082.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msx082
Published: 08 February 2017

Sardinians are “outliers” in the European genetic landscape and, according to paleogenomic nuclear data, the closest to early European Neolithic farmers. To learn more about their genetic ancestry, we analyzed 3,491 modern and 21 ancient mitogenomes from Sardinia. We observed that 78.4% of modern mitogenomes cluster into 89 haplogroups that most likely arose in situ. For each Sardinian-Specific Haplogroup (SSH), we also identified the upstream node in the phylogeny, from which non-Sardinian mitogenomes radiate. This provided minimum and maximum time estimates for the presence of each SSH on the island. In agreement with demographic evidence, almost all SSHs coalesce in the post-Nuragic, Nuragic and Neolithic-Copper Age periods. For some rare SSHs, however, we could not dismiss the possibility that they might have been on the island prior to the Neolithic, a scenario that would be in agreement with archeological evidence of a Mesolithic occupation of Sardinia.