Y-chromosomal connection between Hungarians and geographically distant populations of the Ural Mountain region and West Siberia

Hungarians who live in Central Europe today are one of the westernmost Uralic speakers. Despite of the proposed Volga-Ural/West Siberian roots of the Hungarian language, the present-day Hungarian gene pool is highly similar to that of the surrounding Indo-European speaking populations. However, a limited portion of specific Y-chromosomal lineages from haplogroup N, sometimes associated with the spread of Uralic languages, link modern Hungarians with populations living close to the Ural Mountain range on the border of Europe and Asia. Here we investigate the paternal genetic connection between these spatially separated populations. We reconstruct the phylogeny of N3a4-Z1936 clade by using 33 high-coverage Y-chromosomal sequences and estimate the coalescent times of its sub-clades. We genotype close to 5000 samples from 46 Eurasian populations to show the presence of N3a4-B539 lineages among Hungarians and in the populations from Ural Mountain region, including Ob-Ugric-speakers from West Siberia who are geographically distant but linguistically closest to Hungarians. This sub-clade splits from its sister-branch N3a4-B535, frequent today among Northeast European Uralic speakers, 4000–5000 ya, which is in the time-frame of the proposed divergence of Ugric languages

Uniparental Genetic Heritage of Belarusians: Encounter of Rare Middle Eastern Matrilineages with a Central European Mitochondrial DNA Pool

Ethnic Belarusians make up more than 80% of the nine and half million people inhabiting the Republic of Belarus. Belarusians together with Ukrainians and Russians represent the East Slavic linguistic group, largest both in numbers and territory, inhabiting East Europe alongside Baltic-, Finno-Permic- and Turkic-speaking people. Till date, only a limited number of low resolution genetic studies have been performed on this population. Therefore, with the phylogeographic analysis of 565 Y-chromosomes and 267 mitochondrial DNAs from six well covered geographic sub-regions of Belarus we strove to complement the existing genetic profile of eastern Europeans. Our results reveal that around 80% of the paternal Belarusian gene pool is composed of R1a, I2a and N1c Y-chromosome haplogroups – a profile which is very similar to the two other eastern European populations – Ukrainians and Russians. The maternal Belarusian gene pool encompasses a full range of West Eurasian haplogroups and agrees well with the genetic structure of central-east European populations. Our data attest that latitudinal gradients characterize the variation of the uniparentally transmitted gene pools of modern Belarusians. In particular, the Y-chromosome reflects movements of people in central-east Europe, starting probably as early as the beginning of the Holocene. Furthermore, the matrilineal legacy of Belarusians retains two rare mitochondrial DNA haplogroups, N1a3 and N3, whose phylogeographies were explored in detail after de novo sequencing of 20 and 13 complete mitogenomes, respectively, from all over Eurasia. Our phylogeographic analyses reveal that two mitochondrial DNA lineages, N3 and N1a3, both of Middle Eastern origin, might mark distinct events of matrilineal gene flow to Europe: during the mid-Holocene period and around the Pleistocene-Holocene transition, respectively

Современные представления о роли кишечной микробиоты в развитии туберкулеза легких

The review presents data from 55 publications describing the relationship between the gut microbiome and tuberculosis. It presents possible mechanisms by which the intestinal microbiota can influence various parts of the immune system.It describes the effect of anti-tuberculosis drugs on the intestinal microbiome as well as possible prospects for the use of probiotics in the treatment and prevention of tuberculosis.В обзоре представлены данные из 55 литературных источников, описывающих взаимосвязь микробиома кишечника c туберкулезом. Обсуждаются механизмы, с помощью которых микробиота кишечника может влиять на различные звенья иммунной системы, представлены данные о влиянии противотуберкулезных препаратов на микробиом кишечника, а также возможные перспективы использования пробиотиков в лечении и профилактике туберкулеза

Reconstructing Druze population history

The Druze are an aggregate of communities in the Levant and Near East living almost exclusively in the mountains of Syria, Lebanon and Israel whose ~1000 year old religion formally opposes mixed marriages and conversions. Despite increasing interest in genetics of the population structure of the Druze, their population history remains unknown. We investigated the genetic relationships between Israeli Druze and both modern and ancient populations. We evaluated our findings in light of three hypotheses purporting to explain Druze history that posit Arabian, Persian or mixed Near Eastern-Levantine roots. The biogeographical analysis localised proto-Druze to the mountainous regions of southeastern Turkey, northern Iraq and southeast Syria and their descendants clustered along a trajectory between these two regions. The mixed Near Eastern-Middle Eastern localisation of the Druze, shown using both modern and ancient DNA data, is distinct from that of neighbouring Syrians, Palestinians and most of the Lebanese, who exhibit a high affinity to the Levant. Druze biogeographic affinity, migration patterns, time of emergence and genetic similarity to Near Eastern populations are highly suggestive of Armenian-Turkish ancestries for the proto-Druze

East Eurasian ancestry in the middle of Europe: Genetic footprints of Steppe nomads in the genomes of Belarusian Lipka Tatars

Medieval era encounters of nomadic groups of the Eurasian Steppe and largely sedentary East Europeans had a variety of demographic and cultural consequences. Amongst these outcomes was the emergence of the Lipka Tatars-a Slavic-speaking Sunni-Muslim minority residing in modern Belarus, Lithuania and Poland, whose ancestors arrived in these territories via several migration waves, mainly from the Golden Horde. Our results show that Belarusian Lipka Tatars share a substantial part of their gene pool with Europeans as indicated by their Y-chromosomal, mitochondrial and autosomal DNA variation. Nevertheless, Belarusian Lipkas still retain a strong genetic signal of their nomadic ancestry, witnessed by the presence of common Y-chromosomal and mitochondrial DNA variants as well as autosomal segments identical by descent between Lipkas and East Eurasians from temperate and northern regions. Hence, we document Lipka Tatars as a unique example of former Medieval migrants into Central Europe, who became sedentary, changed language to Slavic, yet preserved their faith and retained, both uni-and bi-parentally, a clear genetic echo of a complex population interplay throughout the Eurasian Steppe Belt, extending from Central Europe to northern China

Influence of long-term antibiotic therapy on gut microbiome composition and metabolic profile in pulmonary tuberculosis

The use of long-term multicomponent antibiotic therapy is the most effective way to treat tuberculosis (TB). However, little is known about the effect of this chemotherapy on the human intestinal microflora. The purpose of this study was to analyze an effect of long-term antibiotic therapy on gut microbiome composition and metabolic profile in TB patients. We used deep sequencing of fecal samples from 23 treatment-naive TB patients to reconstruct the metabolic capacity and strain/species-level abundance in the gut microbiome. Two fecal samples were obtained from each patient: before and after treatment. We showed that TB treatment regimen does not disrupt the overall diversity of the gut microbiome but does have an impact on gut bacterial microbiome composition and metabolic profile. While taking first-line anti-tuberculosis drugs (isoniazid, rifampicin, ethambutol, pyrazinamide), TB patients showed an apparent increase in Actinobacteria abundance. Pairwise comparison of metagenomic data revealed 28 differentially represented bacterial taxa, of which three species Bacteroides cellulosilyticus, Enterocloster aldensis, Clostridium spiroforme were strongly enriched in TB patients post-chemotherapy, whereas 25 species were enriched in TB patients before treatment (Bifidobacterium catenulatum, Enterococcus faecium, Bacteroides salyersiae, Bacteroides xylanisolvens, Bacteroides eggerthii, Lachnospira eligens, Akkermansia muciniphila, Ruminococcus lactaris, etc.) (p 0.05). The metabolic profile of the gut microbiome was characterized by increased metabolic processes aimed at the growth and division of microbial cells. Iron is the main limiting factor for growth and reproduction. In addition, it is important to note the prevalence of glycolysis and lactate fermentation as the major means for energy production by intestinal microbiota