Palaeo-Eskimo genetic ancestry and the peopling of Chukotka and North America.

Much of the American Arctic was first settled 5,000 years ago, by groups of people known as Palaeo-Eskimos. They were subsequently joined and largely displaced around 1,000 years ago by ancestors of the present-day Inuit and Yup'ik. The genetic relationship between Palaeo-Eskimos and Native American, Inuit, Yup'ik and Aleut populations remains uncertain.

Comparing signals of natural selection between three Indigenous North American populations.

While many studies have highlighted human adaptations to diverse environments worldwide, genomic studies of natural selection in Indigenous populations in the Americas have been absent from this literature until very recently. Since humans first entered the Americas some 20,000 years ago, they have settled in many new environments across the continent. This diversity of environments has placed variable selective pressures on the populations living in each region, but the effects of these pressures have not been extensively studied to date.

Genetics: Ancient DNA Clarifies Population Histories of the Northeastern Margin of North America.

A new study of ancient mitochondrial DNA from Newfoundland and Labrador indicates that this region at the northeastern margin of North America was populated three times in succession by different indigenous groups. This research helps shed light on the movement of populations across the continent, following the initial peopling of the Americas.

Two contemporaneous mitogenomes from terminal Pleistocene burials in eastern Beringia.

Pleistocene residential sites with multiple contemporaneous human burials are extremely rare in the Americas. We report mitochondrial genomic variation in the first multiple mitochondrial genomes from a single prehistoric population: two infant burials (USR1 and USR2) from a common interment at the Upward Sun River Site in central Alaska dating to ∼11,500 cal B.P.

Mitochondrial diversity of Iñupiat people from the Alaskan North Slope provides evidence for the origins of the Paleo- and Neo-Eskimo peoples.

Objectives: All modern Iñupiaq speakers share a common origin, the result of a recent (∼800 YBP) and rapid trans-Arctic migration by the Neo-Eskimo Thule, who replaced the previous Paleo-Eskimo inhabitants of the region. Reduced mitochondrial haplogroup diversity in the eastern Arctic supports the archaeological hypothesis that the migration occurred in an eastward direction. We tested the hypothesis that the Alaskan North Slope served as the origin of the Neo- and Paleo-Eskimo populations further east.

Comparative analysis of the human saliva microbiome from different climate zones: Alaska, Germany, and Africa.

Background: Although the importance of the human oral microbiome for health and disease is increasingly recognized, variation in the composition of the oral microbiome across different climates and geographic regions is largely unexplored.

Results: Here we analyze the saliva microbiome from native Alaskans (76 individuals from 4 populations), Germans (10 individuals from 1 population), and Africans (66 individuals from 3 populations) based on next-generation sequencing of partial 16S rRNA gene sequences. After quality filtering, a total of 67,916 analyzed sequences resulted in 5,592 OTUs (defined at ≥97% identity) and 123 genera.

Ancient DNA from the Schild site in Illinois: Implications for the Mississippian transition in the Lower Illinois River Valley.

Archaeologists have long debated whether rapid cultural change in the archaeological record is due to in situ developments, migration of a new group into the region, or the spread of new cultural practices into an area through existing social networks, with the local peoples adopting and adapting practices from elsewhere as they see fit (acculturation). Researchers have suggested each of these explanations for the major cultural transition that occurred at the beginning of the Mississippian period (AD 1050) across eastern North America. In this study, we used ancient DNA to test competing hypotheses of migration and acculturation for the culture change that occurred between the Late Woodland (AD 400-1050) and Mississippian (AD 1050-1500) periods in the Lower Illinois River Valley.

Ancient DNA perspectives on American colonization and population history.

Ancient DNA (aDNA) analyses have proven to be important tools in understanding human population dispersals, settlement patterns, interactions between prehistoric populations, and the development of regional population histories. Here, we review the published results of sixty-three human populations from throughout the Americas and compare the levels of diversity and geographic patterns of variation in the ancient samples with contemporary genetic variation in the Americas in order to investigate the evolution of the Native American gene pool over time. Our analysis of mitochondrial haplogroup frequencies and prehistoric population genetic diversity presents a complex evolutionary picture.

South from Alaska: a pilot aDNA study of genetic history on the Alaska Peninsula and the eastern Aleutians.

The Aleutian Islands were colonized, perhaps several times, from the Alaskan mainland. Earlier work documented transitions in the relative frequencies of mtDNA haplogroups over time, but little is known about potential source populations for prehistoric Aleut migrants. As part of a pilot investigation, we sequenced the mtDNA first hypervariable region (HVRI) in samples from two archaeological sites on the Alaska Peninsula (the Hot Springs site near Port Moller, Alaska; and samples from a cluster of sites in the Brooks River area near Katmai National Park and Preserve) and one site from Prince William Sound (Mink Island).

The human genetic history of the Americas: the final frontier.

The Americas, the last continents to be entered by modern humans, were colonized during the late Pleistocene via a land bridge across what is now the Bering strait. However, the timing and nature of the initial colonization events remain contentious. The Asian origin of the earliest Americans has been amply established by numerous classical marker studies of the mid-twentieth century.

Tuberculosis in the New World: a study of ribs from the Schild Mississippian population, West-Central Illinois.

Vertebral lesions have been the main evidence for infection by the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTC) in paleopathology. Skeletal involvement is expected in a small percentage of infected individuals. Recently, several authors report a correlation between rib lesions and tuberculosis (TB) complex infection.