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Genome-wide data from medieval German Jews show that the Ashkenazi founder event pre-dated the 14th century

Shamam Waldman, Daniel Backenroth, Éadaoin Harney, Stefan Flohr, Nadia C. Neff, Gina M. Buckley, Hila Fridman, Ali Akbari, Nadin Rohland, Swapan Mallick, Jorge Cano Nistal, Jin Yu, Nir Barzilai, Inga Peter, Gil Atzmon, Harry Ostrer, Todd Lencz, Yosef E. Maruvka, Maike Lämmerhirt, Leonard V. Rutgers, Virginie Renson, Keith M. Prufer, Stephan Schiffels, Harald Ringbauer, Karin Sczech, Shai Carmi, David Reich
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.05.13.491805
Shamam Waldman
1Braun School of Public Health and Community Medicine, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 9112102, Israel
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Daniel Backenroth
1Braun School of Public Health and Community Medicine, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 9112102, Israel
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Éadaoin Harney
2Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
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Stefan Flohr
3Department of Biology, University of Hildesheim, 31141 Hildesheim, Germany
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Nadia C. Neff
4Department Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA
5Center for Stable Isotopes, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87106, USA
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Gina M. Buckley
6Research Reactor Center, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA
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Hila Fridman
1Braun School of Public Health and Community Medicine, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 9112102, Israel
7Medical Genetics Institute, Shaare Zedek Medical Center, Jerusalem 9103102, Israel
8Faculty of Medicine, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 9112001, Israel
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Ali Akbari
2Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
9Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA
10Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA
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Nadin Rohland
9Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA
10Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA
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Swapan Mallick
9Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA
10Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA
11Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA
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Jorge Cano Nistal
12Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 3200003, Israel
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Jin Yu
13Department of Psychiatry, Division of Research, The Zucker Hillside Hospital Division of Northwell Health, Glen Oaks, NY 11004, USA
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Nir Barzilai
14Departments of Medicine and Genetics, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY 10461, USA
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Inga Peter
15Department of Genetics and Genomic Sciences, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY 10029, USA
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Gil Atzmon
14Departments of Medicine and Genetics, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY 10461, USA
16Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Haifa, Haifa 3498838, Israel
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Harry Ostrer
17Department of Pathology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY 10461, USA
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Todd Lencz
13Department of Psychiatry, Division of Research, The Zucker Hillside Hospital Division of Northwell Health, Glen Oaks, NY 11004, USA
18Departments of Psychiatry and Molecular Medicine, Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell, Hempstead, NY 11550, USA
19Institute for Behavioral Science, The Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, Manhasset, NY 11030, USA
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Yosef E. Maruvka
12Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 3200003, Israel
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Maike Lämmerhirt
20Department of Medieval History, University of Erfurt, 99089 Erfurt, Germany
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Leonard V. Rutgers
21Department of History and Art History, Utrecht University, Utrecht, 3512 BS, The Netherlands
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Virginie Renson
6Research Reactor Center, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA
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Keith M. Prufer
4Department Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA
5Center for Stable Isotopes, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87106, USA
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Stephan Schiffels
22Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
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Harald Ringbauer
2Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
22Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
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Karin Sczech
23World Heritage Coordinator, City of Erfurt, 99084 Erfurt, Germany
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Shai Carmi
1Braun School of Public Health and Community Medicine, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 9112102, Israel
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  • For correspondence: shai.carmi@huji.ac.il reich@genetics.med.harvard.edu
David Reich
2Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
9Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA
10Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA
11Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA
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  • For correspondence: shai.carmi@huji.ac.il reich@genetics.med.harvard.edu
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Abstract

We report genome-wide data for 33 Ashkenazi Jews (AJ), dated to the 14th century, following a salvage excavation at the medieval Jewish cemetery of Erfurt, Germany. The Erfurt individuals are genetically similar to modern AJ and have substantial Southern European ancestry, but they show more variability in Eastern European-related ancestry than modern AJ. A third of the Erfurt individuals carried the same nearly-AJ-specific mitochondrial haplogroup and eight carried pathogenic variants known to affect AJ today. These observations, together with high levels of runs of homozygosity, suggest that the Erfurt community had already experienced the major reduction in size that affected modern AJ. However, the Erfurt bottleneck was more severe, implying substructure in medieval AJ. Together, our results suggest that the AJ founder event and the acquisition of the main sources of ancestry pre-dated the 14th century and highlight late medieval genetic heterogeneity no longer present in modern AJ.

Competing Interest Statement

Shai Carmi is a paid consultant and holds stock options at MyHeritage. Daniel Backenroth is an employee and shareholder at The Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson. Eadaoin Harney is an employee of 23andMe.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC 4.0 International license.
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Posted May 16, 2022.
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Genome-wide data from medieval German Jews show that the Ashkenazi founder event pre-dated the 14th century
Shamam Waldman, Daniel Backenroth, Éadaoin Harney, Stefan Flohr, Nadia C. Neff, Gina M. Buckley, Hila Fridman, Ali Akbari, Nadin Rohland, Swapan Mallick, Jorge Cano Nistal, Jin Yu, Nir Barzilai, Inga Peter, Gil Atzmon, Harry Ostrer, Todd Lencz, Yosef E. Maruvka, Maike Lämmerhirt, Leonard V. Rutgers, Virginie Renson, Keith M. Prufer, Stephan Schiffels, Harald Ringbauer, Karin Sczech, Shai Carmi, David Reich
bioRxiv 2022.05.13.491805; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.05.13.491805
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Genome-wide data from medieval German Jews show that the Ashkenazi founder event pre-dated the 14th century
Shamam Waldman, Daniel Backenroth, Éadaoin Harney, Stefan Flohr, Nadia C. Neff, Gina M. Buckley, Hila Fridman, Ali Akbari, Nadin Rohland, Swapan Mallick, Jorge Cano Nistal, Jin Yu, Nir Barzilai, Inga Peter, Gil Atzmon, Harry Ostrer, Todd Lencz, Yosef E. Maruvka, Maike Lämmerhirt, Leonard V. Rutgers, Virginie Renson, Keith M. Prufer, Stephan Schiffels, Harald Ringbauer, Karin Sczech, Shai Carmi, David Reich
bioRxiv 2022.05.13.491805; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.05.13.491805

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