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posted 13. February 2006 07:47
Source: PLoS Biology
Complete Mitochondrial Genome and Phylogeny of Pleistocene Mammoth Mammuthus primigenius
Evgeny I. Rogaev, Yuri K. Moliaka, Boris A. Malyarchuk, Fyodor A. Kondrashov, Miroslava V. Derenko, Ilya Chumakov, Anastasia P. Grigorenko
ABSTRACT
Phylogenetic^ relationships between the extinct woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), and the Asian (Elephas maximus) and African savanna (Loxodonta africana) elephants remain unresolved. Here, we report the sequence of the complete mitochondrial^ genome^ (16,842 base pairs) of a woolly mammoth extracted from permafrost-preserved remains from the Pleistocene epoch—the oldest mitochondrial genome sequence determined to date. We demonstrate that well-preserved mitochondrial genome fragments, as long as ~1,600–1700 base pairs, can be retrieved from pre-Holocene remains of an extinct species. Phylogenetic reconstruction of the Elephantinae clade suggests that M. primigenius and E. maximus are sister species that diverged soon after their common ancestor split from the L. africana lineage. Low nucleotide diversity found between independently determined mitochondrial genomic sequences of woolly mammoths separated geographically and in time suggests that north-eastern Siberia was occupied by a relatively homogeneous population of M. primigenius throughout the late Pleistocene.
Funding. FAK is supported by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.
Academic Editor: David Penny, Massey University, New Zealand
Received: December 7, 2005; Accepted: January 10, 2006; Published: February 7, 2006
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0040073
Copyright: © 2006 Rogaev et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: Evgeny.Rogaev@umassmed.edu
Citation: Rogaev EI, Moliaka YK, Malyarchuk BA, Kondrashov FA, Derenko MV, et al. (2006) Complete Mitochondrial Genome and Phylogeny of Pleistocene Mammoth Mammuthus primigenius. PLoS Biol 4(3): e73
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Read the full research article at PLoS Biology
[ 13. February 2006, 07:48: Message edited by: ISCID News Editor ]
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