Ancient Nile mummies aged 2023-2797 years yielded low-coverage DNA imputed for phenotyping. Ancestry closest to modern Mediterranean and Middle Easterners, not modern Egyptians. Modern Egyptians received additional sub-Saharan African admixture in recent times. Ancient Egyptians carried lighter skin allele. Predicted light brown complexion, dark eyes, dark hair, no freckles. Faces reconstructed via 3D principal components from SNP data. Schuenemann et al confirmed increased sub-Saharan ancestry after Roman period. Imputation boosted SNP calls from <3% to 29-65% despite 0.13-0.96X coverage. First comprehensive DNA phenotyping on such ancient human DNA. Techniques handle fragmented ancient or forensic samples down to 10 picograms.
Comments
Be the first to comment!