Apart from the historical interest, this study might be useful to further calibrate the Y-chromosome molecular clock. The Y-SNP mutation rate was previously calibrated with a Chinese pedigree that went down to ~1800AD, and this is potentially much deeper.
arXiv:1412.6274 [q-bio.PE]
Y Chromosome of Aisin Gioro, the Imperial House of Qing Dynasty
Shi Yan, Harumasa Tachibana, Lan-Hai Wei, Ge Yu, Shao-Qing Wen, Chuan-Chao Wang
(Submitted on 19 Dec 2014)
House of Aisin Gioro is the imperial family of the last dynasty in Chinese history - Qing Dynasty (1644 - 1911). Aisin Gioro family originated from Jurchen tribes and developed the Manchu people before they conquered China. By investigating the Y chromosomal short tandem repeats (STRs) of 7 modern male individuals who claim belonging to Aisin Gioro family (in which 3 have full records of pedigree), we found that 3 of them (in which 2 keep full pedigree, whose most recent common ancestor is Nurgaci) shows very close relationship (1 - 2 steps of difference in 17 STR) and the haplotype is rare. We therefore conclude that this haplotype is the Y chromosome of the House of Aisin Gioro. Further tests of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) indicates that they belong to Haplogroup C3b2b1*-M401(xF5483), although their Y-STR results are distant to the "star cluster", which also belongs to the same haplogroup. This study forms the base for the pedigree research of the imperial family of Qing Dynasty by means of genetics.
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1 comment:
I think pedigree SNP mutation rates don't work for more than a few hundreds of generations for various reasons - one of them being the accumulation of (in combination) deleterious mutations. Probably something like 50% to 75% of new paternal lineages created have very little chance of producing several hundreds generations worth of significant offsprings.
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