Haplogroup A2 Discussion Thread

[alchemist223]

Do not belong to this haplogroup myself, but I am interested in it as it is one of the major maternal haplogroups the took part in the peopling of the Americas over 15,000 years ago (as well as its presence in some indigenous Siberian ethnic groups). Also interested regarding its place among maternal Haplogroup A; it belongs to the derived A-a and A-a1 subclades of Haplogroup A, along with some other branches of that haplogroup.

[Ebizur]

   

Figure 4 (Phylogenetic tree of complete mtDNA sequences of haplogroups A and Y) from Miroslava Derenko, Boris Malyarchuk, Tomasz Grzybowski, et al. (2007), "Phylogeographic Analysis of Mitochondrial DNA in Northern Asian Populations," Am. J. Hum. Genet. 2007;81:1025–1041.

Ch = Chukchi
Krk = Koryak
Khm = Khamnigan
Br = Buryat
Evk = Evenk
Vn = Russian from Veliky Novgorod*
Man = Mansi
Cz = Czech
Alt = Altaian (Altai Kizhi)
ON125 = Japanese (Obese young Japanese male from Aichi)
Kor = Korean

*I have checked the entry in the NCBI database for Vn65 and confirmed that that individual is indeed a Russian from Veliky Novgorod.

[alchemist223]

Figure 4 (Phylogenetic tree of complete mtDNA sequences of haplogroups A and Y) from Miroslava Derenko, Boris Malyarchuk, Tomasz Grzybowski, et al. (2007), "Phylogeographic Analysis of Mitochondrial DNA in Northern Asian Populations," Am. J. Hum. Genet. 2007;81:1025–1041.

Ch = Chukchi
Krk = Koryak
Khm = Khamnigan
Br = Buryat
Evk = Evenk
VN = Russian (most likely from Veliky Novgorod)
Man = Mansi
Cz = Czech
Alt = Altaian (Altai Kizhi)
ON125 = Japanese (Obese young Japanese male from Aichi)
Kor = Korean

Would you say this is the mtDNA tree that you agree with the most?

[Ebizur]

Figure 4 (Phylogenetic tree of complete mtDNA sequences of haplogroups A and Y) from Miroslava Derenko, Boris Malyarchuk, Tomasz Grzybowski, et al. (2007), "Phylogeographic Analysis of Mitochondrial DNA in Northern Asian Populations," Am. J. Hum. Genet. 2007;81:1025–1041.

Ch = Chukchi
Krk = Koryak
Khm = Khamnigan
Br = Buryat
Evk = Evenk
VN = Russian (most likely from Veliky Novgorod)
Man = Mansi
Cz = Czech
Alt = Altaian (Altai Kizhi)
ON125 = Japanese (Obese young Japanese male from Aichi)
Kor = Korean

Would you say this is the mtDNA tree that you agree with the most?

Not necessarily. I have posted Figure 4 from Derenko et al. (2007) because it is one of few published dendrograms in which members of haplogroup A2 have been analyzed alongside members of haplogroup A(xA2). In most studies, samples either from Asia or from the Americas have been examined, but not samples from both Asia and the Americas; the study by Derenko et al. (2007) is no exception to that trend, but it at least has the advantage of having included samples of Chukchis and Koryaks belonging to the subclades A2a and A2b.

For comparison, I will post Figure 1 from Satish Kumar, Claire Bellis, Mark Zlojutro, et al. (2011), "Large scale mitochondrial sequencing in Mexican Americans suggests a reappraisal of Native American origins," BMC Evolutionary Biology 2011, 11:293:

   

[Awamp Divo]

I, too, am interested in mtdna haplogroup A2, as all of my grandchildren carry it. Three of them are A2r and the fourth is A2h. Several years ago, we were contacted by a DNA researcher in Argentina who was researching haplogroup A2r. He told us then that most of the known samples came from Zapotec people in Mesoamerica. My grandchildren who carry A2r, get it from my wife, whose paper-trail genealogy only goes back to the 18th century in Tamaulipas in Northern Mexico. I wonder if it had been there awhile as my wife had several novel mutations the researcher had only seen in my wife's sample and not seen in the Zapotec folks.

My grandson, who carries A2h, got his from a Navajo grandmother. I have seen DNA tests of several folks with American Southwest Native ancestry and the predominant haplogroup seems to be B2. I have wondered if my grandson's A2h was brought to New Mexico by Athabaskan-language-speaking proto-Navajos from up north, or is from down south in Mexico. My grandson's Navajo clan are called the Mexican clan (Nakai Dine'). I don't know if the following story is true but I have read that they originate from a Hispanic woman from the Upper Rio Grande Valley who was captured by Navajos in the 18th century for ransom but nobody ponied up and she lived the rest of her life with the Navajos. Like many other Native American cultures, descent is counted matrilineally by Navajos.

[CLTVTE]

In “The deep population history of northern East Asia from the Late Pleistocene to the Holocene”, the Chukotko-Kamchatkan Itelmen population was predominantly formed of two components (except for a tiny amount of the third component in a few male and female individuals, connected to ancient East Asians):

[1] The major brown/orange component. At some point, such a component reached 100% in mtDNA M8’CZ/yDNA C2-M217 ancient AR10-13K individuals. In “Human genetic history on the Tibetan Plateau in the past 5100 years”, mtDNA M8’CZ-related specimens have an affinity to the yDNA K2a* Ust’-Ishim, which means that mtDNA M8’CZ is one of those Ust’-Ishim-affiliated lineages, while indigenous Australians showed an affinity to Ust’-Ishim in “The deep population history of northern East Asia from the Late Pleistocene to the Holocene”, and, surprisingly, Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages clustered as an outgroup to Australian languages in Jager, 2017 (“From words to features to trees: Computing a world tree of languages from word lists”).

[2] The lesser pink component. This component is maximized in a ca. 33000-year-old AR33K individual of the Amur(Heilongjiang) River basin. On the one hand, AR33K is a female mtDNA N-related individual, hence such a component has something to do with an ancient female mtDNA N-related population, which should have been very likely to include the deeply diverged mtDNA A2 clade (the TMRCA of mtDNA A is 33700 years ago in “A Revised Timescale for Human Evolution Based on Ancient Mitochondrial Genomes”, while yDNA C2-L1373 separated ca. 34100 years ago). On the other hand, in the same article, AR33K is closer, than Tianyuan was, to Vestonice16 (western yDNA C1a), Karelia_hunter-gatherer (western yDNA R), Motala12, Sweden (western yDNA I2a), which implies that the linguistic cluster in Jager, 2017, which includes as outgroups languages of populations with a more and more prominent “AR33K-like” component, is opposed to the main East Asian cluster, because consequent outgroups of this “AR33K-related” cluster (for example, Eskimo-Aleut languages) have stronger and stronger connections to languages of bearers of ancestries, which shared more and more in common with the mentioned Paleolithic Europeans.

As for the additional joining of some Sepik languages, related to the Sepik Papi language, etc, in Jager, 2017 (the Sepic Papi language clustered with the Japanese language in Jager, 2017), there is not much ethnogenetic meaning to it. The materials of “Human genetic history on the Tibetan Plateau in the past 5100 years” defend the genetic composition of Eastern Eurasians without such components.

As for the appearance of mtDNA A2 in Japan, it should be at least historically important.
“Ancient Mitogenomes Reveal the Origins and Genetic Structure of the Neolithic Shimao Population in Northern China” points to the following case of mtDNA A2:
Japanese_HGDP00770 Japanese Japanese Japan Japan HGDP00770 mtDNA A2 (yDNA R1b-M73 (R-Y13200)) Cann et al., 2002

https://www.yfull.com/tree/R-Y13200/
The basal mtDNA A2 has not been observed in the prominent Mongol individuals so far, but was observed in Native Americans. Indeed, this individual was relabeled a Native American, but his presence in Japan as a Japanese may point to migration and backmigration of the Japanese people to and from America during the recent historical period.

HGDP-CEPH Diversity Panel: Atypical Individuals

HGDP-CEPH ID Initial reported population Genotypes suggest Reporting Lab Comments
HGDP00770 Japanese Native American Rosenberg Science 298:2381

Nonetheless, the European cases of yDNA R1b-M73 are very rare in America, which means that this yDNA R1b-M73 branch of HGDP00770 might be considered the one of a Japanese origin, which probably explains the desire to report this individual in a few scientific institutions. Hammer et al, 2006, points to Okinawa, unrelated to Mongols, where yDNA R-M207 was found in Japan as the only non-Eastern Eurasian haplogroup.