A major migration followed by recurrent gene flow as a model for the peopling of Americas: a patrilineal perspective.

RODRIGUES DOS, SANTOS FABRICIO; LACERDA, DR; JOTA, ML; SANDOVAL, JR; BONNATO, S; GONZÁLEZ JOSÉ, ROLANDO; BORTOLINI, MARIA CATIRA

Congreso; 81th Annual Meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists; 2012

A model suggesting a single major migration during the pre-Columbian peopling of Americas has been described by geneticists working with Y chromosome and mtDNA markers in the middle 1990´s. Subsequent genetic analysis reinforced this model, but also indicated that some minor lineages did not fit the single migration expectations, and in 2008, a consensus model has been proposed by our group (Gonzáles-José et al. AJPA 2008), reconciling all available genetic and morphological data. This consensus model claims that most of genomic background of present native Americans would be derived from a major migration occupying Beringia in the end of Pleistocene that expanded to colonize Americas, but new alleles and phenotypes were brought from Asia through recurrent gene flow during Holocene. We present here new genetic evidence indicating that this scenario is the most compatible with the current distribution of paternal lineages detected by the Y chromosome phylogeny. New data of previously cryptic Q and C derived haplotypes were now detected with a higher number of SNPs in a large native American sample and indicate a minor but heterogeneous diversity of Y lineages, which map their separate origins in Asia and it is an expectation a low gene flow that could also bring the Mongoloid morphology traces to Americas.