科研之友
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摘要
Genetic identification of old biological specimens is often limited to the analysis of short, degraded DNA fragments, but the development and application of comprehensive DNA testing for identification of old forensic or historical samples is of considerable interest. In the early 1990 s, forensic investigation of a grave found in Russia [1] suggested that the human remains it contained were those of members of the imperial Romanov family, specifically Emperor Nicholas II, his wife Empress Alexandra and their children, together with three servants and a physician, who were all killed during the Russian Civil War in 1918.Owing to its high copy number, its rapid rate of evolution, and its haploid and maternal mode of inheritance, mitochondrial (mtDNA) has a number of advantages over autosomal DNA markers for the identification of human remains [2]. The high copy number, with several hundred mtDNA molecules per cell, means that with older remains there is a greater likelihood of success in analyzing mtDNA as opposed to autosomal DNA, simply because mtDNA is more abundant. The mtDNA control region, which includes the origin of H strand replication, the displacement (D) loop and both origins of transcription, is the most variable region of the human mitochondrial genome [3]. Most polymorphisms are concentrated in two hypervariable segments (HVS1 and HVS2), one of which encompasses the origin of replication, while the other lies within the D loop itself.The aim of the present study was to investigate if there are variants in the HSV1 mtDNA sequence of the French Emperor Napol谷on I (Napol谷on Bonaparte; 1769-1821) compared with the Anderson human genome sequence [3].A rare variant was found in the HVS1 sequence of the mtDNA extracted from preserved hairs, authenticated as belonging to Napol谷on. Subsequently, the same rare variant was found in the HSV1 sequences of mtDNAs extracted from hair samples authenticated as belonging to Napol谷on%26apos;s mother (Letizia) and youngest siste
