PLoS ONE (Jan 2015)

Genetic Heritage of the Balto-Slavic Speaking Populations: A Synthesis of Autosomal, Mitochondrial and Y-Chromosomal Data.

  • Alena Kushniarevich,
  • Olga Utevska,
  • Marina Chuhryaeva,
  • Anastasia Agdzhoyan,
  • Khadizhat Dibirova,
  • Ingrida Uktveryte,
  • Märt Möls,
  • Lejla Mulahasanovic,
  • Andrey Pshenichnov,
  • Svetlana Frolova,
  • Andrey Shanko,
  • Ene Metspalu,
  • Maere Reidla,
  • Kristiina Tambets,
  • Erika Tamm,
  • Sergey Koshel,
  • Valery Zaporozhchenko,
  • Lubov Atramentova,
  • Vaidutis Kučinskas,
  • Oleg Davydenko,
  • Olga Goncharova,
  • Irina Evseeva,
  • Michail Churnosov,
  • Elvira Pocheshchova,
  • Bayazit Yunusbayev,
  • Elza Khusnutdinova,
  • Damir Marjanović,
  • Pavao Rudan,
  • Siiri Rootsi,
  • Nick Yankovsky,
  • Phillip Endicott,
  • Alexei Kassian,
  • Anna Dybo,
  • Genographic Consortium,
  • Chris Tyler-Smith,
  • Elena Balanovska,
  • Mait Metspalu,
  • Toomas Kivisild,
  • Richard Villems,
  • Oleg Balanovsky

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0135820
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10, no. 9
p. e0135820

Abstract

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The Slavic branch of the Balto-Slavic sub-family of Indo-European languages underwent rapid divergence as a result of the spatial expansion of its speakers from Central-East Europe, in early medieval times. This expansion-mainly to East Europe and the northern Balkans-resulted in the incorporation of genetic components from numerous autochthonous populations into the Slavic gene pools. Here, we characterize genetic variation in all extant ethnic groups speaking Balto-Slavic languages by analyzing mitochondrial DNA (n = 6,876), Y-chromosomes (n = 6,079) and genome-wide SNP profiles (n = 296), within the context of other European populations. We also reassess the phylogeny of Slavic languages within the Balto-Slavic branch of Indo-European. We find that genetic distances among Balto-Slavic populations, based on autosomal and Y-chromosomal loci, show a high correlation (0.9) both with each other and with geography, but a slightly lower correlation (0.7) with mitochondrial DNA and linguistic affiliation. The data suggest that genetic diversity of the present-day Slavs was predominantly shaped in situ, and we detect two different substrata: 'central-east European' for West and East Slavs, and 'south-east European' for South Slavs. A pattern of distribution of segments identical by descent between groups of East-West and South Slavs suggests shared ancestry or a modest gene flow between those two groups, which might derive from the historic spread of Slavic people.