0000000000323521

AUTHOR

Diana I. Cruz Dávalos

0000-0002-5309-6937

The genomic history of the Aegean palatial civilizations

Summary The Cycladic, the Minoan, and the Helladic (Mycenaean) cultures define the Bronze Age (BA) of Greece. Urbanism, complex social structures, craft and agricultural specialization, and the earliest forms of writing characterize this iconic period. We sequenced six Early to Middle BA whole genomes, along with 11 mitochondrial genomes, sampled from the three BA cultures of the Aegean Sea. The Early BA (EBA) genomes are homogeneous and derive most of their ancestry from Neolithic Aegeans, contrary to earlier hypotheses that the Neolithic-EBA cultural transition was due to massive population turnover. EBA Aegeans were shaped by relatively small-scale migration from East of the Aegean, as e…

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Experimental conditions improving in-solution target enrichment for ancient DNA.

High-throughput sequencing has dramatically fostered ancient DNA research in recent years. Shotgun sequencing, however, does not necessarily appear as the best-suited approach due to the extensive contamination of samples with exogenous environmental microbial DNA. DNA capture-enrichment methods represent cost-effective alternatives that increase the sequencing focus on the endogenous fraction, whether it is from mitochondrial or nuclear genomes, or parts thereof. Here, we explored experimental parameters that could impact the efficacy of MYbaits in-solution capture assays of ~5000 nuclear loci or the whole genome. We found that varying quantities of the starting probes had only moderate ef…

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