Mitochondrial genealogy of Maria Mercedes Cairol Antunez, footprint of recent immigration to Costa Rica / La genealogia mitocondrial de Maria Mercedes Cairol Antunez, huella de la inmigracion reciente a Costa Rica

TL;DR

This study traces a four-generation mitochondrial lineage from Spain to Costa Rica, illustrating recent female migration and its impact on genetic diversity in the Americas through molecular genealogy.

Contribution

It presents a detailed mitochondrial genealogy linking Spain, Cuba, and Costa Rica, highlighting recent female migration's role in shaping regional genetic diversity.

Findings

The mitochondrial lineage belongs to haplogroup H, indicating European ancestry.

Recent female migration contributed to genetic diversity in Costa Rica.

The study demonstrates the use of molecular genealogy in understanding migration patterns.

Abstract

The technological advances in Genetics have given rise to the science of Molecular Genealogy, by giving us the opportunity to approach the study of pedigrees from a new perspective, examining alive people at the same time than collating records from their ancestors. A four generations matrilineal genealogy is presented from Da. Angela Antunez (b. a. 1881 in Barcelona, Spain) to their descendants in Cuba and Costa Rica. The observed mitochondrial lineage has a substitution in the region HVR1 respect to the reference sequence (CRS) and belongs to H haplogroup. This is consistent -as expected, with the recent documented European lineage. This is an example of differential female migration, in which women move to the husband's place of origin. Because of patrilocal marriages are practiced in most societies, such migration mechanism has had a major impact since the arrival of immigrant women bring new and different lineages of mtDNA, which together with the admixture process contributed to enrich the diversity and regionalization of the gene pool of human populations in the Americas.