About the Authors

Beniamino Trombetta

Affiliation Dipartimento di Biologia e Biotecnologie “C. Darwin”, Sapienza Università di Roma, Rome, Italy

Eugenia D'Atanasio

Affiliation Dipartimento di Biologia e Biotecnologie “C. Darwin”, Sapienza Università di Roma, Rome, Italy

Andrea Massaia

Current Address: The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Hinxton, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom

Affiliation Dipartimento di Biologia e Biotecnologie “C. Darwin”, Sapienza Università di Roma, Rome, Italy

Natalie M. Myres

Affiliation AncestryDNA, Provo, Utah, United States of America

Rosaria Scozzari

Affiliation Dipartimento di Biologia e Biotecnologie “C. Darwin”, Sapienza Università di Roma, Rome, Italy

Fulvio Cruciani

fulvio.cruciani@uniroma1.it (FC); E-mail: novelletto@bio.uniroma2.it (AN)

Affiliations Dipartimento di Biologia e Biotecnologie “C. Darwin”, Sapienza Università di Roma, Rome, Italy, Istituto di Biologia e Patologia Molecolari, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Rome, Italy

Andrea Novelletto

fulvio.cruciani@uniroma1.it (FC); E-mail: novelletto@bio.uniroma2.it (AN)

Affiliation Dipartimento di Biologia, Università di Roma “Tor Vergata”, Rome, Italy

Competing Interests

N.M.M. is affiliated to AncestryDNA based in Utah. AncestryDNA sells kits to determine ancestry (http://dna.ancestry.com/). There are no other patents, products in development or marketed products to declare. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: FC RS AN. Performed the experiments: ED BT AM. Analyzed the data: BT RS AN. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: NMM FC AN RS. Wrote the paper: AN FC RS.