[Mitochondrial DNA sequence variations of Keriyan in the Taklamakan desert]

The Keriyans live in the center of the Taklamakan desert of Xinjiang Province and they have never married with outsiders. Nobody knows clearly how they immigrated here and who was their origin. The mtDNA hypervariable segment I sequences were sequenced in 75 Keriyans. Seventy-one unique HVS I types were identified, varying at 68 nucleotide positions. Nucleotide diversity and the mean pairwise differences of Keriyan are intermediate between those reported for Eastern and Western populations. Keriyan's low Tajima's D statistics and bell-shaped pairwise-difference distributions can be interpreted as the hallmark of an ancient population expansion. Phylogenetic analysis shows Central Asian populations occupy a position intermediate between the Eastern and Western populations, moreover, the Keriyan presents shorter genetic distances to Xinjiang Uighur and Uighur in other places than to other populations.