© University of Kansas
Despite numerous genetic studies that have helped contribute to knowledge about how ancient groups populated the Americas, scientists have not reached a consensus about how many Native Americans made up the original population. This analysis of DNA sequences suggests the Native American founding population that migrated from Siberia consisted of approximately 250 people.
The study "How strong was the bottleneck associated to the peopling of the Americas? New insights from multilocus sequence data," published in the journal Genetics and Molecular Biology, includes Michael Crawford, KU professor of anthropology, and the researchers' results corroborate findings of previous studies that were based on smaller datasets.
"Going from a few hundred founders to around 40 million inhabitants of the Americas, who eventually live under different environmental conditions to which they adapt, is pretty exciting stuff," said Crawford, also head of KU's Laboratory of Biological Anthropology. "It's about understanding how evolution operates in terms of genetic diversity."The researchers examined nine noncoding regions of the DNA samples collected from populations that trace the path of the migration. This included samples of individuals from China, 10 Siberian groups and from 10 Native American populations scattered across Central and South America representing several different tribal affiliations.
Comment: Vasopressin is the name for a natural endogenous peptide, separate from the exogenous peptide or medication.