RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Genomic study of the Ket: a Paleo-Eskimo-related ethnic group with significant ancient North Eurasian ancestry
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 024554
DO 10.1101/024554
A1 Pavel Flegontov
A1 Piya Changmai
A1 Anastassiya Zidkova
A1 Maria D. Logacheva
A1 Olga Flegontova
A1 Mikhail S. Gelfand
A1 Evgeny S. Gerasimov
A1 Ekaterina E. Khrameeva
A1 Olga P. Konovalova
A1 Tatiana Neretina
A1 Yuri V. Nikolsky
A1 George Starostin
A1 Vita V. Stepanova
A1 Igor V. Travinsky
A1 Martin Tříska
A1 Petr Tříska
A1 Tatiana V. Tatarinova
YR 2015
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/08/13/024554.abstract
AB The Kets, an ethnic group in the Yenisei River basin, Russia, are considered the last nomadic hunter-gatherers of Siberia, and Ket language has no transparent affiliation with any language family. We investigated connections between the Kets and Siberian and North American populations, with emphasis on the Mal’ta and Paleo-Eskimo ancient genomes, using original data from 46 unrelated samples of Kets and 42 samples of their neighboring ethnic groups (Uralic-speaking Nganasans, Enets, and Selkups). We genotyped over 130,000 autosomal SNPs, determined mitochondrial and Y-chromosomal haplogroups, and performed high-coverage genome sequencing of two Ket individuals. We established that the Kets belong to the cluster of Siberian populations related to Paleo-Eskimos. Unlike other members of this cluster (Nganasans, Ulchi, Yukaghirs, and Evens), Kets and closely related Selkups have a high degree of Mal’ta ancestry. Implications of these findings for the linguistic hypothesis uniting Ket and Na-Dene languages into a language macrofamily are discussed.