| Description |
Ancient DNA techniques will be applied to over 150 human remains from the US and Mexico corresponding to paleoamerican and amerindian populations in order to address the origin and diversification of the first inhabitants of the Americas. Second generation DNA sequencing technologies will be used to yield large amounts of genetic data of Amerindians from across Mexico and the Southwest United States. This will include the well known and controversial extinct Pericu population from the Baja California Peninsula and the Clovis site of Anzick, Montana. Complete mitochondrial genomes and nuclear SNPs will be used to compare the genetics of the presumably isolated Pericu population with contemporaneous Amerindians. In addition the genetic data of these populations will also be compared to those of the first paleoamericans (Clovis). Initially all samples will be screened using conventional PCR and amplicon sequencing on the Roche FLX platform for short fragments within the mitochondrial hypervariable region. These fragments, predominantly spanning HVS1, will be used to both assign a preliminary haplotype to each sample, and identify samples of particular interest (based on which haplogroups they fall into). Subsequently, the dataset will be partitioned into two groups. Those samples of particular interest will have the complete mitochondrial DNA genome sequenced using novel targeted-capture based sequencing. This is the first large scale genetic study to address this subject and the data obtained will be used to test different hypotheses about the colonization of America, such as the origin of the Clovis, possible population replacement events and therefore about who were the direct ancestors of the first Amerinidians.
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