The free journal PLoS Genetics has a new article which shows that Mediterranean Europeans can be fairly well distinguished from other Europeans using a genome-wide panel comprising 5,700+ SNP markers.
PLoS Genetics (early online release)
European Population Substructure: Clustering of Northern and Southern Populations
Michael F Seldin et al.
PROVISIONAL ABSTRACT
The development of methodologies for defining population genetic structure has provided the ability to identify the major ethnic contributions in individual subjects in diverse populations. Using a genome-wide SNP panel we observe population structure in a diverse group of Europeans and European Americans. Under a variety of conditions and tests there is a consistent and reproducible distinction between "northern" and "southern" European population groups: most individual subjects with southern European ancestry (Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Greek) have >85% membership in the "south" population; and most northern, western, eastern and central Europeans have >90% in the "north" population group. Ashkenazi Jewish as well as Sephardic Jewish origin also showed >85% membership in the "south" population consistent with a later Mediterranean origin of these ethnic groups. Based on this work, we have developed a core set of informative SNP markers that can control for this partition in European population structure in a variety of clinical and genetic studies.
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