human mitochondrial genetics Human mitochondrial genetics is the study of the genetics of human mitochondrial DNA (the DNA contained in human mitochondria). The human mitochondrial genome is the entirety of hereditary information contained in human mitochondria. Mitochondria ...

, haplogroup E is a human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroup typical for the

Malay Archipelago The Malay Archipelago is the archipelago between Mainland Southeast Asia and Australia, and is also called Insulindia or the Indo-Australian Archipelago. The name was taken from the 19th-century European concept of a Malay race, later based ...

. It is a subgroup of haplogroup M9.

Origin

Two contrasting proposals have been made for the location and time of the origin of Haplogroup E. One view is that the clade was formed over 30,000 years ago, around the time of the

Last Glacial Maximum The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), also referred to as the Last Glacial Coldest Period, was the most recent time during the Last Glacial Period where ice sheets were at their greatest extent between 26,000 and 20,000 years ago. Ice sheets covered m ...

, on the northeast coast of

Sundaland Sundaland (also called Sundaica or the Sundaic region) is a biogeographical region of Southeast Asia corresponding to a larger landmass that was exposed throughout the last 2.6 million years during periods when sea levels were lower. It inc ...

(near modern

Borneo Borneo () is the List of islands by area, third-largest island in the world, with an area of , and population of 23,053,723 (2020 national censuses). Situated at the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia, it is one of the Greater Sunda ...

). In this model, the haplogroup was dispersed by rising sea levels during the Late Glacial period. In 2014, the mitochondrial DNA of an 8,000-year-old skeleton found on Liang Island, one of the

Matsu Islands The Matsu Islands; Foochow Romanized: Mā-cū liĕk-dō̤ ( or ), officially Lienchiang County; Foochow Romanized: Lièng-gŏng-gâing (), are an archipelago of 36 islands and islets in the East China Sea governed by the Republic of China ...

off the southeast China coast, was found to belong to Haplogroup E, with two of the four mutations characteristic of the E1 subgroup. From this, Ko and colleagues argue that Haplogroup E arose 8,000 to 11,000 years ago near the north

Fujian Fujian is a provinces of China, province in East China, southeastern China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, Guangdong to the south, and the Taiwan Strait to the east. Its capital is Fuzhou and its largest prefe ...

coast, travelled to Taiwan with Neolithic settlers 6,000 years ago, and from there spread to Maritime Southeast Asia with the

Austronesian language The Austronesian languages ( ) are a language family widely spoken throughout Maritime Southeast Asia, parts of Mainland Southeast Asia, Madagascar, the islands of the Pacific Ocean and Taiwan (by Taiwanese indigenous peoples). They are spoken b ...

dispersal. Soares et al caution against over-emphasizing a single sample, and maintain that a constant

molecular clock The molecular clock is a figurative term for a technique that uses the mutation rate of biomolecules to deduce the time in prehistory when two or more life forms diverged. The biomolecular data used for such calculations are usually nucleot ...

implies the earlier date (and more southerly origin) remains more likely.

Distribution

Haplogroup E is found throughout

Maritime Southeast Asia Maritime Southeast Asia comprises the Southeast Asian countries of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and East Timor. The terms Island Southeast Asia and Insular Southeast Asia are sometimes given the same meaning as ...

. It is nearly absent from mainland East Asia, where its sister group M9a (also found in Japan) is common. In particular, it is found among speakers of

Austronesian languages The Austronesian languages ( ) are a language family widely spoken throughout Maritime Southeast Asia, parts of Mainland Southeast Asia, Madagascar, the islands of the Pacific Ocean and Taiwan (by Taiwanese indigenous peoples). They are spoken ...

, and it is rare even in Southeast Asia among speakers of other language families. It has been detected in populations of

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...

, the

Philippines The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is an Archipelagic state, archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Located in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of List of islands of the Philippines, 7,641 islands, with a tot ...

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...

Malaysia Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. Featuring the Tanjung Piai, southernmost point of continental Eurasia, it is a federation, federal constitutional monarchy consisting of States and federal territories of Malaysia, 13 states and thre ...

(including

Sabah Sabah () is a States and federal territories of Malaysia, state of Malaysia located in northern Borneo, in the region of East Malaysia. Sabah has land borders with the Malaysian state of Sarawak to the southwest and Indonesia's North Kalima ...

, but not the

Orang Asli The Orang Asli are a Homogeneity and heterogeneity, heterogeneous Indigenous peoples, indigenous population forming a national minority in Malaysia. They are the oldest inhabitants of Peninsular Malaysia. As of 2017, the Orang Asli accounted f ...

of peninsular Malaysia), coastal

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean n ...

, and especially in the

Chamorros The Chamorro people (; also Chamoru) are the Indigenous people of the Mariana Islands, politically divided between the United States territory of Guam and the encompassing Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands in Micronesia, a commonweal ...

of the

Mariana Islands The Mariana Islands ( ; ), also simply the Marianas, are a crescent-shaped archipelago comprising the summits of fifteen longitudinally oriented, mostly dormant volcanic mountains in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, between the 12th and 21st pa ...

. Of the four principal subclades, E1b and E2a are found mainly in Maritime Southeast Asia, while only E1a and E2b are also found in Taiwan. E2b has low diversity within Taiwan, suggesting that it arrived there about 5,000 years ago. The most common E subclade, E1a1a, has highest diversity in Taiwan, followed by the Philippines and Sulawesi. Moreover, other branches of E1a1 are largely confined to Taiwan.

Subclades

This phylogenetic tree of haplogroup E subclades is based on the paper by Mannis van Oven and Manfred Kayser ''Updated comprehensive phylogenetic tree of global human mitochondrial DNA variation'' and subsequent published research. *E **E1 ***E1a ****E1a1 *****E1a1a ******E1a1a1 ****E1a2 ***E1b ****E1b1 **E2 ***E2a ***E2b ****E2b1 ****E2b2

References

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Origin

Distribution

Subclades

See also

References

External links