Global distribution of Y-chromosome haplogroup C reveals the prehistoric migration routes of African exodus and early settlement in East Asia

Abstract

The regional distribution of an ancient Y-chromosome haplogroup C-M130 (Hg C) in Asia provides an ideal tool of dissecting prehistoric migration events. We identified 465 Hg C individuals out of 4284 males from 140 East and Southeast Asian populations. We genotyped these Hg C individuals using 12 Y-chromosome biallelic markers and 8 commonly used Y-short tandem repeats (Y-STRs), and performed phylogeographic analysis in combination with the published data. The results show that most of the Hg C subhaplogroups have distinct geographical distribution and have undergone long-time isolation, although Hg C individuals are distributed widely across Eurasia. Furthermore, a general south-to-north and east-to-west cline of Y-STR diversity is observed with the highest diversity in Southeast Asia. The phylogeographic distribution pattern of Hg C supports a single coastal 'Out-of-Africa' route by way of the Indian subcontinent, which eventually led to the early settlement of modern humans in mainland Southeast Asia. The northward expansion of Hg C in East Asia started B40 thousand of years ago (KYA) along the coastline of mainland China and reached Siberia B15 KYA and finally made its way to the Americas.

The Y-chromosome C3* Star-Cluster Attributed to Genghis Khan's Descendants is Present at High Frequency in the Kerey Clan from Kazakhstan

“…It is possible that differences between sample sets of Kazakhs were mostly maintained by their tribal affiliations, because Kazakh society is characterized by a complex tribal structure (Dulik et al 2011). However this possibility was not considered in previous studies of Ychromosome variation in Kazakh populations (Perez-Lezaun et al 1999;Wells et al 2001;Zerjal et al 2002;Chaix et al 2007;Malyarchuk et al 2010;Zhong et al 2010;Zhong et al 2011). …”

Mongolians in the Genetic Landscape of Central Asia: Exploring the Genetic Relations among Mongolians and Other World Populations

“…Zhong et al (2010) used an ancient Y-chromosome haplogroup C-M130 (Hg C) to propose that ancient migration routes were derived from the African exodus and gradually colonized South Asia, Southeast Asia, Oceania and East Asia by a single Paleolithic migration from Africa to Asia and Oceania which occurred more than 40 KYA, and then moved north in mainland East Asia; likely following the coastline. Hertzberg et al (1989) used an Asian-specific 9-bp deletion of Mitochondrial DNA to support the thesis that an independent group of pre-Polynesian ancestors who colonized into the Pacific were ultimately derived from East Asia.…”

“…North Central Asian (NCA) populations have been studied by many investigators but are underrepresented in more comprehensive population genetic surveys, such as the HGDP (Cann et al 2002;Rosenberg et al 2002;Li et al 2008) and non-recombining Y chromosome DNA (NRY)] (Chatters et al 2014;Duggan et al 2013;Fedorova et al 2013;Hertzberg et al 1989;Kemp et al 2015; Kitchen et al 2008;Kolman et al 1996;Lell et al 2002;Malyarchuk et al 2011;Malyarchuk et al 2013;Mulligan et al 2008;Nasidze et al 2005;Dulik et al 2012;Shi et al 2013;Starikovskaya et al 2004;Sukernik et al 2012;Raghavan et al 2014a;Volodko et al 2008;Zhong et al 2011;Zhong et al 2010), ancient DNA (aDNA, uniparental and autosomal) (Crubezy et al 2010;Keyser-Tracqui et al 2003, Keyser-Tracqui et al 2006Malyarchuk et al 2011;Raghavan et al 2014b). Mitochondrial DNA haplogroups offer a fairly crude inference of continental ancestry, conveying only information regarding possibly one or two top ancestry components while losing other ancestry information (Emery et al 2015).…”

Confirmation of Y haplogroup tree topologies with newly suggested Y-SNPs for the C2, O2b and O3a subhaplogroups

“…YSNPs are also useful for investigating the history of human migration because of their low mutation rate. Specifically, Y-SNPs are used to reconstruct male lineages through hierarchically-arranged allelic sets known as haplogroups, and their continent-specific characteristics enable researchers to infer the biogeographic ancestry of an individual through the haplogroup identification [7,[10][11][12][13][14][15][16]. Hence, an up-to-date extended Y-chromosomal phylogeny based on Y-SNP markers that are preferably unambiguous and have high discriminative power is required for forensic applications [7].…”