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82
September 25 • 2014
m
A
new study concludes that
all Ashkenazi Jews can trace
their ancestry to a "bottle-
neck" of just 350 individuals, dating
back to between 600 and 800 years
ago.
The study, published in the Nature
Communications journal Sept. 9,
was authored by Shai Carmi, a com-
puter science professor at Columbia
University, and more than 20 medi-
cal researchers from Yale, Columbia,
Yeshiva University's Albert Einstein
College of Medicine, Memorial Sloan-
Kettering Cancer Center, Hebrew
University of Jerusalem and other
institutions.
Researchers analyzed the genomes
of 128 Ashkenazi Jews and com-
pared them to those of non-Jewish
Europeans in order to determine
which genetic markers are unique to
Ashkenazi Jews. They found that the
Ashkenazi Jews' genetic similarities
were so acute that one of the study's
researchers, Columbia professor Itsik
Pe'er, told the Live Science website that
among Ashkenazi Jews, "everyone is a
30th cousin:'
The findings will enable researchers
to catalog nearly all of the genetic vari-
ations from the founding population,
the study's authors said. Such thorough
genetic cataloging could help clinicians
interpret individual genetic mutations,
improve disease mapping and provide
insight into the histories of Middle
Eastern and European populations, the
study said.
The catalog of complete Ashkenazi
Jewish genomes should help identify
the disease-causing mutations that the
progenitors of Ashkenazi Jewry passed
on. Until now, data has only been
available for a small subset of common
Ashkenazi DNA markers — about
one in every 3,000 letters of DNA. The
findings are also expected to help
with disease research in other ethnic
groups.
"Our study is the first full DNA
sequence dataset available for
Ashkenazi Jewish genomes," said
Pe'er, an Israeli computer scientist
at Columbia University, who led the
study. "With this comprehensive
catalog of mutations present in the
Ashkenazi Jewish population, we
will be able to more effectively map
disease genes onto the genome and
thus gain a better understanding of
common disorders. We see this study
serving as a vehicle for personalized
medicine and a model for researchers
working with other populations:'
Medieval Founders
Ashkenazi Jews are known to have
origins in the Levant, which Israel
is smack dab in the middle of. But
exactly who "European" Ashkenazi
Jews are has long been debated. An
analysis of the gene database shows
that the original Ashkenazi Jews
were about half European and half
Middle Eastern. They lived in the
medieval era, about 600 to 800 years
ago, according to the analysis — and
numbered just 350 or so people.
"Our analysis shows that Ashkenazi
Jewish medieval founders were ethni-
cally mixed, with origins in Europe
and in the Middle East, roughly in
equal parts:' said Carmi, a post-
doctoral scientist who works with
Peer and conducted the analysis.
"[The] data are more comprehensive
than what was previously available,
and we believe the data settle the dis-
pute regarding European and Middle
Eastern ancestry in Ashkenazi Jews:'
The analysis also suggested that
today's Europeans are descended
primarily from migrants from the
Middle East after the last ice age,
about 20,000 years ago, not from
the first humans to arrive to the
continent about 40,000 years ago.
The researchers are now looking
into where the Middle Eastern and
European Jews first met and who
their closest descendants are today.
Because the Ashkenazi commu-