Evolutionary biology research group

We wish to understand how human genetic variation arose and diversified globally, as we know it today. It is an interdisciplinary research, where genetics & genomics mergers with history and archaeology, historical linguistics as well as data about paleoclimate etc. To achieve our goals, we co-organized, in the university, Collegium for Transdisciplinary Research in Archaeology, Genetics and Linguistics. Our chair works in historical symbiosis with the Estonian Biocentre within the Institute of Genomics and collaborates with many researchers worldwide. With a global focus, we have studied and study time- and space-resolved rise of human genetic diversity. Inter alia, we have been particularly interested in Eurasian Uralic-speaking peoples, to whom belong also Estonians. An overview about our published research can be obtained from scientific publication data bases, searching for address “Estonian Biocentre”.

As far as the most recent period is concerned, we highlight just one paper, where, together with our Hungarian colleagues¹, we showed that their patrilineal gene pool still holds an Y-chromosomal variant N3a4, presumably inherited from that still present among Uralic area & West Siberian peoples and phylogenetically split from the latter some two- three thousand years ago, whilst about four-five thousand years ago from a branch, richly present today among the Baltic Finnic speakers such as Finns and Estonians. This study is a direct continuation of our previous research in this particular direction².