DNA, Volume 2, Issue 2 (June 2022) – 3 articles

In the course of its short history, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) has made a long journey from obscurity to the forefront of research on major biological processes. mtDNA alterations have been found in all major disease groups, and their significance remains the subject of intense research. Despite remarkable progress, our understanding of the major aspects of mtDNA biology, such as its replication, damage, repair, transcription, maintenance, etc., is frustratingly limited. The path to better understanding mtDNA and its role in cells, however, remains torturous and not without errors, which sometimes leave a long trail of controversy behind them. This review aims to provide a brief summary of our current knowledge of mtDNA and highlight some of the controversies that require attention from the mitochondrial research community. Full article

While conventional physical maps helped build most of the reference genomes we use today, generating the maps was prohibitively expensive, and the technology was abandoned in favor of whole-genome shotgun sequencing (WGS). However, genome assemblies generated using WGS data are often less contiguous. We introduce Physlr, a tool that leverages long-range information provided by some WGS technologies to construct next-generation physical maps. These maps have many potential applications in genome assembly and analysis, including, but not limited to, scaffolding. In this study, using experimental linked-read datasets from two humans, we used Physlr to construct chromosome-scale physical maps (NGA50s of 52 Mbp and 70 Mbp). We also demonstrated how these physical maps can help scaffold human genome assemblies generated using various sequencing technologies and assembly tools. Across all experiments, Physlr substantially improved the contiguity of baseline assemblies over state-of-the-art linked-read scaffolders. Full article

Mitochondrial DNA phylogenetic and phylogeographic studies have been very useful in reconstructing the history of modern humans. In addition, recent advances in ancient DNA techniques have enabled direct glimpses of the human past. Taking advantage of these possibilities, I carried out a spatiotemporal study of the rare and little-studied mtDNA haplogroup U8. Today, U8, represented by its main branches U8a and U8b, has a wide western Eurasian range but both with average frequencies below 1%. It is known that, in Paleolithic times, U8 reached high frequencies in European hunter-gatherers. However, it is pertinent to precise that only lineages belonging to U8a and U8c, a sister branch of U8b, were detected at that time. In spite of its wide geographic implantation, U8c was extinct after the Last Glacial Maximum, but U8a subsisted until the present day, although it never reached its high Paleolithic frequencies. U8a is detected mainly in northern and western Europe including the Basques, testifying to a minor maternal Paleolithic continuity. In this respect, it is worth mentioning that Basques show more U8-based affinities with continental European than with Mediterranean populations. On the contrary, coalescent ages of the most ancient U8b clades point to a Paleolithic diversification in the Caucasus and the Middle Eastern areas. U8b-derived branches reached eastern Europe since the Mesolithic. Subsequent Neolithic and post-Neolithic expansions widen its ranges in continental Europe and the Mediterranean basin, including northern Africa, albeit always as a minor clade that accompanied other, more representative, mitochondrial lineages. Full article