AUTHOR=Sequeira Jaison Jeevan , Vinuthalakshmi Kadengodlu , Das Ranajit , van Driem George , Mustak Mohammed S. 

TITLE=The maternal U1 haplogroup in the Koraga tribe as a correlate of their North Dravidian linguistic affinity

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Genetics

VOLUME=14

YEAR=2024

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/genetics/articles/10.3389/fgene.2023.1303628

DOI=10.3389/fgene.2023.1303628

ISSN=1664-8021

ABSTRACT=<p><bold>Introduction:</bold> The Koraga tribe are an isolated endogamous tribal group found in the southwest coastal region of India. The Koraga language shares inherited grammatical features with North Dravidian languages. To seek a possible genetic basis for this exceptionality and understand the maternal lineage pattern, we have aimed to reconstruct the inter-population and intra-population relationships of the Koraga tribal population by using mtDNA markers for the hypervariable regions along with a partial coding region sequence analysis.</p><p><bold>Methods and Results:</bold> Amongst the 96 individuals studied, we observe 11 haplogroups, of which a few are shared and others are unique to the clans Soppu, Oṇṭi and Kuṇṭu. In addition to several deep rooted Indian-specific lineages of macrohaplogroups M and U, we observe a high frequency of the U1 lineage (∼38%), unique to the Koraga. A Bayesian analysis of the U1 clade shows that the Koraga tribe share their maternal lineage with ancestral populations of the Caucasus at the cusp of the Last Glacial Maximum.</p><p><bold>Discussion:</bold> Our study suggests that the U1 lineage found in the Indian subcontinent represents a remnant of a post-glacial dispersal. The presence of West Asian U1 when viewed along with historical linguistics leads us to hypothesise that Koraga represents a mother tongue retained by a vanquished population group that fled southward at the demise of the Indus civilisation as opposed to a father tongue, associated with a particular paternal lineage.</p>