Discipline of Anatomy and Pathology, The University of Adelaide, Level 2 Helen Mayo Building North, Frome Road, Adelaide, South Australia, 5005, Australia.
Forensic Sci Med Pathol. 2020 Sep;16(3):552-556. doi: 10.1007/s12024-020-00218-3. Epub 2020 Feb 18.
The brutal execution of Tsar Nicholas II, his wife and five children at Yekaterinberg in July 1918 was followed by apparently inept attempts to conceal the bodies. Despite this, the skeletons remained undiscovered until 1979. Even after anthropological and DNA analyses, the absence of two of the children in the grave raised doubts as to the identity of the remains. The discovery of the skeletal fragments of a young woman aged between 18 to 25 years and a boy aged between 10 to 14 years in a shallow grave near the primary burial site in 2007 enabled full DNA investigations of the remains to be undertaken in association with analyses of living Romanov descendants. Autosomal short tandem repeat (STR) testing revealed the sex and familial relationships within the group, and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) testing of the two hypervariable regions (HVI and HVII) showed links between the Tsar and Tsarina and living maternal relatives. The same point heteroplasmy in both the Tsar and his brother, Georgii provided further supportive evidence. There appears little doubt that the skeletal remains in the two graves outside Yekaterinburg are those of Tsar Nicholas, his wife and their five children. The genetic analyses and the features of the fragmented remains are all very consistent with the tragic story of the last days of the Romanov family and with the subsequent desecration and destruction of their bodies.
1918 年 7 月，沙皇尼古拉二世、他的妻子和五个孩子在叶卡捷琳堡被残忍处决，随后有人试图掩盖尸体，但显然做得并不高明。尽管如此，这些尸体还是直到 1979 年才被发现。即使经过人类学和 DNA 分析，由于坟墓中缺少两个孩子，遗体的身份仍然存在疑问。2007 年，在最初的埋葬地点附近的一个浅坟中发现了一名年龄在 18 至 25 岁之间的年轻女子和一名年龄在 10 至 14 岁之间的男孩的骨骼碎片，这使得对遗骸进行全面的 DNA 调查成为可能，同时还对罗曼诺夫家族现存的后代进行了分析。常染色体短串联重复序列（STR）检测揭示了该群体的性别和家族关系，对两个高变区（HVI 和 HVII）的线粒体 DNA（mtDNA）检测表明，沙皇和皇后与现存的母系亲属之间存在联系。在沙皇和他的兄弟格奥尔基身上都发现了相同的点异质性，这进一步提供了支持性证据。毫无疑问，叶卡捷琳堡外的两个坟墓中的骨骼遗骸属于沙皇尼古拉二世、他的妻子和他们的五个孩子。基因分析和破碎遗骸的特征都与罗曼诺夫家族最后几天的悲惨故事以及随后对他们尸体的亵渎和破坏非常吻合。
