The Mitochondrial DNA Landscape of Modern Mexico.

Martin Bodner,Alessandro Achilli,Nicola Rambaldi Migliore,Ricardo M Cerda-Flores,Walther Parson,Ugo A Perego,Scott R Woodward,J Edgar Gomez

doi:10.3390/genes12091453

Abstract

Mexico is a rich source for anthropological and population genetic studies with high diversity in ethnic and linguistic groups. The country witnessed the rise and fall of major civilizations, including the Maya and Aztec, but resulting from European colonization, the population landscape has dramatically changed. Today, the majority of Mexicans do not identify themselves as Indigenous but as admixed, and appear to have very little in common with their pre-Columbian predecessors. However, when the maternally inherited mitochondrial (mt)DNA is investigated in the modern Mexican population, this is not the case. Control region sequences of 2021 samples deriving from all over the country revealed an overwhelming Indigenous American legacy, with almost 90% of mtDNAs belonging to the four major pan-American haplogroups A2, B2, C1, and D1. This finding supports a very low European contribution to the Mexican gene pool by female colonizers and confirms the effectiveness of employing uniparental markers as a tool to reconstruct a country’s history. In addition, the distinct frequency and dispersal patterns of Indigenous American and West Eurasian clades highlight the benefit such large and country-wide databases provide for studying the impact of colonialism from a female perspective and population stratification. The importance of geographical database subsets not only for forensic application is clearly demonstrated.

Highlights

Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is the northernmost Central and southernmost North American country
This study presents the first comprehensive forensic aspect has increasingly become relevant in lieu of the many unidentified victims overview of the mitogenetic landscape of modern Mexico reporting novel complete attempting to cross the Mexican-US border [43]
This study demonstrates overwhelming Indigenous American maternal legacy in the extant admixed Mexican population, with almost 90% of mtDNAs belonging to indigenous lineages

Summary

Introduction

Officially the United Mexican States, is the northernmost Central and southernmost North American country. It covers more than 1.9 million km and is confined by the USA in the North, the Atlantic Ocean in the East, Belize and Guatemala in the South, and the Pacific Ocean in the West. Mexico is part of Mesoamerica in its center and South and the Greater Southwest and Aridoamerica in its North [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. The following millennia included population movements and tremendous growth in some of these communities, giving rise to complex socio-economic, political, and religious urban centers, which eventually became the foundation of large civilizations, such as the Aztec, Maya, Olmec, Teotihuacan, Toltec, and Zapotec peoples, characterized by relative cultural homogeneity [2,5,15]

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