Genome of Pesxtera Muierii skull shows high diversity and low mutational load in pre-glacial Europe
Ikusi/ Ireki
Data
2021-07-26Egilea
Svensson, Emma
Günther, Torsten
Hoischen, Alexander
Munters, Arielle R.
Ioana, Mihai
Ridiche, Florin
Edlund, Hanna
Van Deuren, Rosanne C.
Soficaru, Andrei
Netea, Mihai G.
Jakobsson, Mattias
Current Biology 31(14) : 2973-2983 (2021)
Laburpena
Few complete human genomes from the European Early Upper Palaeolithic (EUP) have been sequenced. Using novel sampling and DNA extraction approaches, we sequenced the genome of a woman from "Pesxtera Muierii,"Romania who lived similar to 34,000 years ago to 13.5x coverage. The genome shows similarities to modern-day Europeans, but she is not a direct ancestor. Although her cranium exhibits both modern human and Neanderthal features, the genome shows similar levels of Neanderthal admixture (similar to 3.1%) to most EUP humans but only half compared to the similar to 40,000-year-old Pesxtera Oase 1. All EUP European hunter-gatherers display high genetic diversity, demonstrating that the severe loss of diversity occurred during and after the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) rather than just during the out-of-Africa migration. The prevalence of genetic diseases is expected to increase with low diversity; however, pathogenic variant load was relatively constant from EUP to modern times, despite post-LGM hunter-gatherers having the lowest diversity ever observed among Europeans.