Nine skeletons found in a shallow grave in Ekaterinburg , Russia , in July 1991, were
tentatively identified by Russian forensic authorities as the remains of the
last Tsar, Tsarina, three of their five children, the Royal Physician and three
servants. We have performed DNA based sex testing and short tandem repeat (STR)
analysis and confirm that a family group was present in the grave. Analysis of
mitochondrial (mt) DNA reveals an exact sequence match between the putative
Tsarina and the three children with a living maternal relative. Amplified mtDNA
extracted from the remains of the putative Tsar has been cloned to demonstrate
heteroplasmy at a single base within the mtDNA control region. One of these
sequences matches two living maternal relatives of the Tsar. We conclude that
the DNA evidence supports the hypothesis that the remains are those of the
Romanov family. Nature
Genetics 6,
130 - 135 (1994)
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