Митохондриальная гаплогруппа A8b и миграции древнего населения в Приохотье

Studies of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) polymorphism provide information about episodes of population genetic history at various time scales, from tens of thousands to several hundred years ago. To date, it has been established that the gene pools of the Siberia's indigenous peoples contain virtually no traces of the oldest Upper Paleolithic inhabitants. The present study demonstrates that one such relic is mitochondrial haplogroup A8b, which is distributed at a low frequency in certain contemporary indigenous populations of Priokhotye. These include the Itelmens and the Koryaks of Kamchatka, the Ainu of Hokkaido, and also representatives of the Okhotsk archaeological culture distributed in Hokkaido, in Sakhalin, and in the Kuril Islands. The phylogenetic analysis of complete mitochondrial genomes belonging to haplogroup A8 revealed that the divergence of A8b occurred in the Upper Paleolithic period, approximately 16-17 thousand yrs. B.P. It seems probable that A8b haplotypes were among the "Beringian" set of mtDNA lineages that have survived to the present days in the Priokhotye population. It is also assumed that haplogroup A8b carriers spread in the Sea of Okhotsk region from Kamchatka through the Kuril Islands to Hokkaido and Sakhalin in the last few millennia.