The maternal history of tribal populations of Chhattisgarh India

Abstract The central region of India is incredibly rich in tribal heritage. It is the most frequent Indian state in terms of tribal population. Understanding the genetic history of the tribal population of India may add detailed information about various demographic processes, including social upliftment. However, to understand these microevolutionary processes, high-resolution genetic analysis is warranted. Therefore, we have used cutting-edge Next-generation sequencing (NGS) techniques and sequenced the mitogenomes of 25 random samples from two major (Gond and Kanwar) tribal populations for complete mitogenome analysis. We aimed to understand the initial peopling of Chhattisgarh from a maternal perspective. The complete genome sequencing enabled us to identify several novel sub-haplogroups. Our results suggested an early expansion and proliferation of maternal ancestry rooted in the time of initial settlement of the subcontinent, which has reached near saturation during 25-30Kya. At the background of founding lineages M and N, we identified maternal haplogroups M2, R5 and U2 as three basal founding haplogroups of this region. Overall, we suggest a high effective (Ne) maternal population in Central India during 25Kya, sustained during the Last Glacial Maximus(LGM).