U7a5 - an Ashkenazi mtDNA founding lineage?

[GailT]

While looking at U7a5 FMS test results, I noticed that several people in this group report Jewish ancestry. U7a5 has an apparently unique HVR1 sequence 16291T, 16304C, 16318T, 16519C, so it can probably also be identified by the HVR1 test. There are 90 people in this group who tested HVR1 at FTDNA and 11 of them tested the full genome. Their origins are all in central or eastern Europe including Germany, Poland, Austria, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. Based on the FMS tests I estimated the group to be about 1200 years old. This would be consistent with a U7a5 founding lineage in Germany in the middle ages and later migration eastward, "forming communities in non German-speaking areas, including Bohemia, Hungary, Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine, Romania, and elsewhere between the 11th and 19th centuries." - the quote is from the Ashkenazi entry in Wikipedia. There are no people in this group who report ancestry outside of the this region, and there are no FMS test results in GenBank other than people who have tested at FTDNA.

U7a5 is has 7 mutations in addition to those of its parent haplogroup U7a. Behar et al 2012 estimate U7a to be about 17,000 years old. Looking at U7a5's sister groups, U7a1 to U7a4, their current geographic distribution is mostly in the Near East, southern Europe and India. An origin of U7a5 in the Near East seems possible, although it would be helpful to find test results with earlier branch points in the descent from U7a to U7a5 and compare their geographic origins. It is very interesting that there are no branch points (yet discovered) in U7a5 over a period of nearly 16,000 years, but this is not unusual for rare subclades in the U haplogroups.

Gail

[Agamemnon]

Seems my father's U7a5 as well:



His maternal ancestors were Crimean Jews.

[C J Wyatt III]

Seems my father's U7a5 as well:


His maternal ancestors were Crimean Jews.

Is his kit not in the project?

[Agamemnon]

Is his kit not in the project?

Unfortunately no, I'll probably test him with FTDNA in the near future, as I'm currently trying to confirm or infirm whether his maternal grandfather was E-M34.

BTW here's what Costa et al. had to say about in their infamous 2013 study:

The main lineages with a potentially Near Eastern source include HV1, R0a1a and U7a5 (~8.3% in all).

[...]

There is surprisingly little evidence for any significant founder event from the Near East. Fewer than 10% of the Ashkenazi mtDNAs can be assigned to a Near Eastern source with any confidence, and these are found at very low frequencies (Fig. 2). The most frequent, belonging to HV1b2, R0a1a and U7, are found at only ~3, 2 and 1% respectively. All are widespread across Ashkenazi communities, and might conceivably be relicts of early Levantine founders, but it seems likely that other more minor Near Eastern lineages are the result of more recent gene flow into the Ashkenazim.

Needless to say, their estimates make little sense now as they've been overturned. More from the sup data:

Moreover, mtDNAs from Samaritans, who can reasonably be expected to have shared an ancestral Hebrew gene pool with Palestinian Jews and who, consistent with this, cluster with modern Druze and Lebanese in autosomal analyses, lack any haplogroup K lineages, or indeed the other more common Ashkenazi founder mtDNAs (in N1b, H or J), whilst carrying Near Eastern lineages (predominantly T2h, U7 and H20) that include several that are in fact closely related to minor Ashkenazi lineages of putative Near Eastern origin (U6a, R0a).

[...]

The haplogroup U3 mtDNAs in the Caucasus are mostly U3b3, whereas those in the Ashkenazim are U3a. There is no U5b in the North Caucasus and the U5a lineages are not similar to those in the Ashkenazim. There are no haplogroup U7 or U6 lineages and those belonging to haplogroups I, W and X are also distinct. There is no haplogroup V7a, only V10a. M1a1 is present, but no M1a1b, and the situation is similar for U1b1. Overall, there is very little case to be made for any assimilation into Ashkenazi communities from this region.

[...]

Haplogroup U7a5 is found across the range at very low levels (overall 1.3%) and has a likely origin in the Near East or South Caucasus. There is a single matching Iranian Jewish lineage in the database. Haplogroup U1 (0.8%) comprises a number of diverse lineages of likely Near Eastern origin. The main haplogroup R0a lineage (~2%) is evidently basal within R0a1a and looks typically Near Eastern (although the only exact match is in fact with a European). Jews have been mobile throughout their history, and some of these minor Near Eastern lineages may represent immigration of a few individuals within the last millennium from the Near East into Ashkenazi communities, rather than pointing to a common Near Eastern or Mediterranean source.

Their approach with the Samaritans is admittedly problematic as absence of evidence ≠ evidence of absence, being related to Samaritans I know full well this is a double-edged sword, implying that the lack of major Ashkenazi lineages in Samaritans points to their absence in the pre-exilic Judean population is about as idiotic as implying that Y-DNA haplogroups R1b-Z2103, J2b or E-M34 could not have been carried by the Judeans because all Samaritans are either J2a, J1 or E-V22.

Similarly, in the last paragraph it sounds as if the authors are arguing against the data, they invoke a recent migration from the Near East within the last millenium despite the fact that they have a "matching Iranian Jewish lineage in the database" which, indeed, clearly indicates that the odds are in favour of a "a common Near Eastern or Mediterranean (understand Judean) source" for the time being... And despite the fact that a non-negligible amount of Samaritans are U7 in the first place.
But again, contradictory statements are a theme of their own throughout this study.

Either way, even with that kind of twisted approach they weren't able to label this lineage "European", so that's the good news I guess

[Agamemnon]

Looks like we have a pre-U7a5 sample from Dammam in Saudi Arabia, which is right next to Bahrain... The fact that this is showing up in the Gulf doesn't just increase the odds of a Near Eastern origin for this haplogroup (according to Costa et al. U7a5 was found in an Iranian Jew), it quite literally reminds me of J1 with all the rare subclades nested under YSC234 showing up in samples from the Gulf, so it's either sampling bias or something was definitely going on in this region.

[Agamemnon]

I've been digging through the supplemental data of Sahakyan et al. 2017, the following are the (presumably) non-Jewish U7a5 samples from Supplementary Dataset 1:

Armenians	Armenia	Near East and North Africa	290 304 318T		HVS1		U7a5	42	Richards et al. 2000
Germans	Germany, Lower Saxony	Europe	291 304 318T		HVS1		U7a5		Pfeiffer et al. 1999
Iranians	Iran, Central	Near East and North Africa	304 318T	73	16024-16500		U7a5	130	Terreros et al. 2011
Jordanians	Jordan	Near East and North Africa	291 309 318T 519		16024-16569		U7a5	3095	Badro et al. 2013
Turkish	Turkey	Near East and North Africa	189 318C 519	73 151 152 263 315.1C 523d 524d 573.3C	Complete sequence		U7a5	Azak53	This study

And here are the Jewish ones:

Jews, Ashkenazi	France	Europe	291 304 318T 519	73 151 152 263	1-300, 16024-16569		U7a5	544	Behar et al. 2006																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																						
Jews, Ashkenazi	Germany	Europe	291 304 318T 519	73 151 152 263	1-300, 16024-16569		U7a5	545	Behar et al. 2006																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																						
Jews, Ashkenazi	Poland	Europe	291 304 318T 519	73 151 152 263	1-300, 16024-16569		U7a5	546	Behar et al. 2006																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																						
Jews, Ashkenazi	Poland	Europe	291 304 318T 519	73 151 152 263	1-300, 16024-16569		U7a5	547	Behar et al. 2006																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																						
Jews, Ashkenazi	Poland	Europe	291 304 318T 519	73 151 152 263	1-300, 16024-16569		U7a5	548	Behar et al. 2006																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																						
Jews, Ashkenazi	Romania	Europe	291 304 318T 519	73 151 152 263	1-300, 16024-16569		U7a5	549	Behar et al. 2006																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																						
Jews, Ashkenazi	Ukraine	Europe	291 304 318T 519	64 73 151 152 263	1-300, 16024-16569		U7a5	550	Behar et al. 2006																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																						
Jews, Ashkenazi	Ukraine	Europe	291 304 318T 519	73 151 152 263	1-300, 16024-16569		U7a5	551	Behar et al. 2006																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																						
Jews, Ashkenazi	Germany	Europe	291 304 318T 519	73 151 152 263 309.1C 315.1C 523d 524d 573.1C	Complete sequence		U7a5	JQ703913, 4106	Behar et al. 2012																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																						
Jews, Ashkenazi	Poland	Europe	291 304 318T 519	73 151 152 263 309.1C 315.1C 523d 524d 573.2C	Complete sequence		U7a5	JQ703978, 4324	Behar et al. 2012																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																																						
Jews, Ashkenazi	Collection of The National Laboratory for the Genetics of Israeli Populations at Tel-Aviv University	Europe	291 304 318T	73 151 152 263 309.1C 315.1C	69-374, 16045-16366		U7a5	Ash2	Picornell et al. 2006

The Jordanian sample is interesting considering the pre-U7a5 case from ad-Dammam in Saudi Arabia. This does resemble the distribution of several branches of Y-DNA Haplogroup J2a-M410.

[Agamemnon]

We now have one U7a5 case from Lebanon:



This is an academic sample, it comes from the present-day dataset of the following study:

Ancient mitogenomes of Phoenicians from Sardinia and Lebanon: A story of settlement, integration, and female mobility


Regarding the present-day samples, here's what the authors have to say...

The modern Lebanese DNA collection consisted of 87 samples that were collected by our team from volunteers representing the various communities across Lebanon, who provided information about their place of birth and the geographical origins of three generations of Lebanese maternal ancestry. A written informed consent was signed and obtained by each participant prior to recruitment. The study protocol and the informed consent form were approved by the IRB of the Lebanese American University. Study methods were carried out in accordance with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki.

This, along with the Jordanian invididual, further reinforces a Levantine origin for this marker amongst present-day Jews. Unlike what Costa et al.
claimed, "immigration of a few individuals within the last millennium from the Near East into Ashkenazi communities" is looking less and less likely, while a common Israelite or Judean source is making more and more sense... Yet another blunder in this paper, one which only serves to underline the political tone of the paper.

BTW the Turkish individual on the tree is the sample I spoke of in my last post.