IDENTIFICATION OF THE REMAINS OF THE ROMANOV FAMILY BY DNA ANALYSIS

Nine skeletons found in a shallow grave in Ekaterinburg, Russia, in Ju ly 1991, were tentatively identified by Russian forensic authorities a s the remains of the last Tsar, Tsarina, three of their five children, the Royal Physician and three servants. We have performed DNA based s ex testing and short tandem repeat (STR) analysis and confirm that a f amily group was present in the grave. Analysis of mitochondrial (mt) D NA reveals an exact sequence match between the putative Tsarina and th e three children with a living maternal relative. Amplified mtDNA extr acted from the remains of the putative Tsar has been cloned to demonst rate heteroplasmy at a single base within the mtDNA control region. On e of these sequences matches two living maternal relatives of the Tsar . We conclude that the DNA evidence supports the hypothesis that the r emains are those of the Romanov family.