Genetic studies on Russians
Genetic studies show that Russians are closest to Poles, Belarusians, Ukrainians and to other Slavs as well as to Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Hungarians.[1]
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Y-DNA
Eight Y chromosome haplogroup subclades, including R1a, N3, I1b, R1b, I2a, J2, N2, and E3b all together, account for >95% of the total Russian Y chromosomal pool. Of the 1228 samples, 11/1228 (0.9%) were classified up to the root level of haplogroups F and K. Only 9/1228 samples (0.7%) fell into haplogroups C, Q, and R2 which are specific to East and South Asian populations.[1]
The top four Y-DNA haplogroups among the sample of 1228 Russians are:[1]
- Haplogroup R1a (Y-DNA) – with an average of 53.4%
- Haplogroup I (Y-DNA) – with an average of 23.5% (Central and South Russia)
- Haplogroup N (Y-DNA) with an average of 17.3%
- Haplogroup R1b (Y-DNA) – with an average of 5.8%
Eight Y chromosome haplogroup subclades, including R1a, N3, I1b, R1b, I1a, J2, N2, and E3b all together, account for >95% of the total Russian Y chromosomal pool. Of the 1228 samples, 11/1228 (0.9%) were classified up to the root level of haplogroups F and K. Only 9/1228 samples (0.7%) fell into haplogroups C, Q, and R2 which are specific to East and South Asian populations.[1]
mtDNA
The mitochondrial gene pool of Russians are represented by mtDNA types belonging to typical West Eurasian groups. East Eurasian admixture was shown to be minimal and existed in low frequencies in the form of Haplogroup M.[2][3] The same studies indicate West Eurasian haplogroups present at a frequency of 97.8% and 98.5% among a sample of 325 and 201 Russians respectively.[2][3]
Autosomal DNA
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Autosomally, Russians are most similar to populations in Eastern Europe followed by other West-Eurasian groups.[5] A study by Qin et al. 2015 estimated around ~13% East Asian derived ancestry among Slavic Russians originating from the northeastern part of European Russia.[6] A follow up paper by Wang et al. argued that Eastern Europeans, such as Russians, but also Finns, can not be modeled without some geneflow from an "Eastern Siberian" component. The authors link this geneflow event to the arrival of paternal Haplogroup N-M231 towards Northeastern Europe.[7] A subsequent genome study by Triska et al. 2017 on Russians and other ethnic groups, stretching from the Baltic region to Lake Baikal, found that Russians are closely related to other Slavic Peoples, followed by other Europeans populations. According to geneticists, "Ukrainians, Belarusians and Russians have almost identical proportions of Caucasus and Northern European components and have virtually no Asian influence". However, many ethnic minority groups from Russia were found to be characterized by the presence of significant amounts of Asian components: "European components account for 50% - 90% of admixture vectors in both Turkic and Uralic speakers of the Volga-Ural region". Other ethnic minorities, such as from the Caucasus region, harbored predominantly "Caucasus and Iranian/Middle Eastern" components.[8]
A genome-wide sequence analysis of Russian populations by Zhernakova et al. 2020 found that ethnic Russians descended from the early Slavic peoples, which diverged from other Indo-Europeans, and migrated to Eastern Europe. Subsequently these early Eastern Slavic groups later came into contact with various other groups, such as Uralic, Turkic, Iranian, Mongolic and Tungusic peoples as well as paleo-Asiatic groups of Siberia, which contributed to the current pattern of genome diversity across the different parts of Russia.[9]
References
- Balanovsky, O; Rootsi, S; Pshenichnov, A; et al. (January 2008). "Two sources of the Russian patrilineal heritage in their Eurasian context". American Journal of Human Genetics. 82 (1): 236–50. doi:10.1016/j.ajhg.2007.09.019. PMC 2253976. PMID 18179905.
- Malyarchuk, BA; Grzybowski, T; Derenko, MV; Czarny, J; Woźniak, M; Miścicka-Sliwka, D (April 2002). "Mitochondrial DNA variability in Poles and Russians" (PDF). Annals of Human Genetics. 66 (4): 261–283. doi:10.1046/j.1469-1809.2002.00116.x. PMID 12418968. S2CID 221424344. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-09-17. Retrieved 2016-05-14.
- Malyarchuk, B; Derenko, M; Grzybowski, T; et al. (December 2004). "Differentiation of Mitochondrial DNA and Y Chromosomes in Russian Populations" (PDF). Human Biology. 76 (6): 877–900. doi:10.1353/hub.2005.0021. PMID 15974299. S2CID 17385503. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-03-25. Retrieved 2016-05-14.
- Jeong, Choongwon; Balanovsky, Oleg; Lukianova, Elena; Kahbatkyzy, Nurzhibek; Flegontov, Pavel; Zaporozhchenko, Valery; Immel, Alexander; Wang, Chuan-Chao; Ixan, Olzhas; Khussainova, Elmira; Bekmanov, Bakhytzhan; Zaibert, Victor; Lavryashina, Maria; Pocheshkhova, Elvira; Yusupov, Yuldash (June 2019). "The genetic history of admixture across inner Eurasia". Nature Ecology & Evolution. 3 (6): 966–976. doi:10.1038/s41559-019-0878-2. ISSN 2397-334X. PMC 6542712. PMID 31036896.
- Khrunin, Andrey V. (March 7, 2013). "A Genome-Wide Analysis of Populations from European Russia Reveals a New Pole of Genetic Diversity in Northern Europe". PLOS ONE. 8 (3): e58552. Bibcode:2013PLoSO...858552K. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0058552. PMC 3591355. PMID 23505534.
- Qin, Pengfei; Zhou, Ying; Lou, Haiyi; Lu, Dongsheng; Yang, Xiong; Wang, Yuchen; Jin, Li; Chung, Yeun-Jun; Xu, Shuhua (2015-04-02). "Quantitating and Dating Recent Gene Flow between European and East Asian Populations". Scientific Reports. 5 (1): 9500. doi:10.1038/srep09500. ISSN 2045-2322. PMC 4382708. PMID 25833680.
- Wong, Emily H. M.; Khrunin, Andrey; Nichols, Larissa; Pushkarev, Dmitry; Khokhrin, Denis; Verbenko, Dmitry; Evgrafov, Oleg; Knowles, James; Novembre, John; Limborska, Svetlana; Valouev, Anton (2017-01-01). "Reconstructing genetic history of Siberian and Northeastern European populations". Genome Research. 27 (1): 1–14. doi:10.1101/gr.202945.115. ISSN 1088-9051. PMC 5204334. PMID 27965293.
Therefore, Siberian admixtures into Northeastern Europe likely began prior to 6.6 kya, coinciding with the expansion of Y-Chromosome haplogroup N1c1 among Siberians and Northeastern Europeans (7.1–4.9 kya). Since haplogroup N likely originated in Asia (Shi et al. 2013) and currently achieves its highest frequency among Siberian populations, its presence among Eastern Europeans likely reflects ancient gene flows from Siberia into Northeastern Europe.
- Triska, Petr; Chekanov, Nikolay; Stepanov, Vadim; Khusnutdinova, Elza K.; Kumar, Ganesh Prasad Arun; Akhmetova, Vita; Babalyan, Konstantin; Boulygina, Eugenia; Kharkov, Vladimir; Gubina, Marina; Khidiyatova, Irina; Khitrinskaya, Irina; Khrameeva, Ekaterina E.; Khusainova, Rita; Konovalova, Natalia (2017-12-28). "Between Lake Baikal and the Baltic Sea: genomic history of the gateway to Europe". BMC Genetics. 18 (1): 110. doi:10.1186/s12863-017-0578-3. ISSN 1471-2156. PMC 5751809. PMID 29297395.
- Zhernakova, Daria V.; Brukhin, Vladimir; Malov, Sergey; Oleksyk, Taras K.; Koepfli, Klaus Peter; Zhuk, Anna; Dobrynin, Pavel; Kliver, Sergei; Cherkasov, Nikolay; Tamazian, Gaik; Rotkevich, Mikhail; Krasheninnikova, Ksenia; Evsyukov, Igor; Sidorov, Sviatoslav; Gorbunova, Anna (2020-01-01). "Genome-wide sequence analyses of ethnic populations across Russia". Genomics. 112 (1): 442–458. doi:10.1016/j.ygeno.2019.03.007. ISSN 0888-7543.