Genetic Analysis of Ancient Human Bones Excavated in Sacheon Nuk-do and Gyeongsan Yimdang-dong, Korea

경산 임당동 및 사천 늑도 출토 인골의 유전자 분석

We investigated the nucleotide substitution and insertion polymorphism of the hypervariable region Ⅰ and Ⅱ in mt DNA by sequencing ancient DNA from 51 ancient bones and teeth excavated at Nuk-do and Yimdang-dong in Korea. It revealed 35 sequence types from the ancient Korean. Of these, different sequences were 34 sequences. There were 19 and 38 base substitutions in HVI and HVⅡ, respectively. Some substitutions were characteristic of East Asian populations as compared with data reported on Caucacianpopulations,16051, 16150, 16172, 16223 in region I and 73, 263 in region II were noted as polymorphic sites, respectively. These were distributed evenly along the control region, though the frequency of each site was variable. Nucleotide substitution rather than insertion and deletion was the prevalent pattern of variation. Insertion of cytosine between312 and 315 in region HVⅡ were detected up to 98% in 51 ancient bone samples. This sequence data represents a phylogenetic tree using NTI DNA Suite computer program. The phylogenetic tree showed that mt DNA sequences of Nuk-do bones were relative to west Siberian and Indonesian. The usefulness of mt DNA sequencing in ancient Korean population excavated atarchaeological sites is based on biological and historical evidence for origin and migration of ancient Korean.