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Title and authors of the article: A Complete mtDNA Genome of an Early Modern Human from Kostenki, Russia, by Johannes Krause, Adrian
W. Briggs, Martin Kircher, Tomislav Maricic, Nicolas Zwyns, Anatoli Derevianko and Svante Pääbo
Summary
The recovery of DNA sequences from early modern humans
(EMHs) could shed light on their interactions with archaic groups such as
Neandertals and their relationships to current human populations. However, such
experiments are highly problematic because present-day human DNA frequently
contaminates bones. For example, in a recent study of mitochondrial (mt) DNA from Neolithic
European skeletons, sequence variants were only taken as authentic if they were
absent or rare in the present population, whereas others had to be discounted
as possible contamination. This limits analysis to EMH individuals carrying rare sequences and thus yields
a biased view of the ancient gene pool. Other approaches of identifying
contaminating DNA, such as genotyping all individuals who have come into
contact with a sample, restrict analyses to specimens where this is possible
and do not exclude all possible sources of contamination. By studying mtDNA in
Neandertal remains, where contamination and endogenous DNA can be distinguished
by sequence, we show that fragmentation patterns and nucleotide
misincorporations can be used to gauge authenticity of ancient DNA sequences.
We use these features to determine a complete mtDNA sequence from a ∼30,000-year-old EMH from the Kostenki 14
site
Reconstruction of the hunter gatherer. Courtesy BBC News.
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