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Genetic Evidence of Authenticity of a Hair Shaft Relic from the Portrait of Tsesarevich Alexei, Son of the Last Russian Emperor

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Abstract

To determine the value of an art piece, authenticity of the artwork must be verified. We demonstrate here a genetic approach to determine origin of a historic relic in the museum piece. We tested two hair shafts of unknown origin framed into a watercolor portrait of Tsesarevich Alexei Romanov, son of the last Russian Tzar Nicholas II, which is a unique item kept in the State Historical Museum. Genetic identification of the hair shafts was performed by analysis of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) markers using both massive parallel genomic sequencing and multiplex targeted PCR, followed by Sanger sequencing. In previous works, we reconstructed the complete mtDNA sequence inherited to Alexei Romanov through the Queen Victoria lineage [Rogaev et al. (2009) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 106, 5258-5263]. DNA extracts were obtained from the two thin hair shafts and used for comparative genetic analysis. Despite the very low quantity and quality of the DNA templates retrieved from the historical single hair shaft specimen, informative mtDNA sequences were determined. The mtDNA haplotype in the hair shafts corresponds to the mtDNA haplotype of Tsarevich Alexei, his sisters, and his mother, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. This haplotype remains unique in the currently available mtDNA databases. Our results reveal that the hair relic from the portrait is associated with the family of the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II. The study is an example of first application of the genetic methodology for verification of the value of museum artwork items.

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Abbreviations

LR:

likelihood ratio

mtDNA:

mitochondrial DNA

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Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Evgeny Lukianov and Alexey Levykin from the State Historical Museum for providing material, support, and illustration of the portrait.

Funding

The research was supported, in part, by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation, system number 075-10-2020-116 (grant no. 13.1902.21.0023) (development of the ancient DNA methodology for genomic sequencing and analysis).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Genetics and Genetic Technologies, Department of Genetics, Faculty of Biology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, 119192, Moscow, Russia

    Tatiana Andreeva, Svetlana Kunizheva & Evgeny Rogaev

  2. Department of Genomics and Human Genetics, Laboratory of Evolutionary Genomics, Vavilov Institute of General Genetics, Russian Academy of Sciences, 119333, Moscow, Russia

    Tatiana Andreeva & Evgeny Rogaev

  3. Center for Genetics and Life Science, Sirius University of Science and Technology, 354340, Sochi, Russia

    Andrey Manakhov & Evgeny Rogaev

  4. Department of Psychiatry, UMass Chan Medical School, 222 Maple Ave, Reed-Rose-Gordon Building, 01545, Shrewsbury, MA, USA

    Evgeny Rogaev

Authors
  1. Tatiana Andreeva
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  2. Andrey Manakhov
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  3. Svetlana Kunizheva
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  4. Evgeny Rogaev
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Correspondence to Evgeny Rogaev.

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The authors declare no conflicts of interest. This article does not contain any studies involving human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

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Andreeva, T., Manakhov, A., Kunizheva, S. et al. Genetic Evidence of Authenticity of a Hair Shaft Relic from the Portrait of Tsesarevich Alexei, Son of the Last Russian Emperor. Biochemistry Moscow 86, 1572–1578 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1134/S0006297921120063

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1134/S0006297921120063

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