February 16, 2009

Forensic study of Hungarian Y-chromosomes

My tabulation of the haplogroup composition is in the figure. The last four haplogroups that aren't very visible occur at a frequency of 0.9, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5% respectively. Nothing too surprising about these results, except for the H1 which probably represents the Gypsy element, and R2 which may be both of South Asian Gypsy or Central Asian/Siberian origin. The lone example of haplogroup N, which was found in 2 of 4 ancient Magyars confirms the low genetic influence of the original Magyars on present-day Hungarians.

It is also fairly interesting that comparatively, Bulgarians end up as being closest to Hungarians, with a negative Fst value. Perhaps this represents some commonality of an Asian element added to a Balcano-Danubian population. Non-significant differences (above 5% level) were also observed in comparison to Romanians, Slovenians, Ukrainians, and surprisingly Norwegians, perhaps due to the fairly unusual high R1a/R1b mix in both populations.

Forensic Sci Int Genet. 2009 Mar;3(2):e27-8.

Hungarian population data for 11 Y-STR and 49 Y-SNP markers.

Völgyi A, Zalán A, Szvetnik E, Pamjav H.

49 Y-chromosomal single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) with TaqMan assay and 11 Y-chromosomal STR loci were tested in 215 independent Hungarian male samples. Genetic distances to 23 other populations were calculated based on haplogroup frequencies with AMOVA implemented in Arlequin2.0. Based on distances phylogenetic tree was constructed with Neighbor-joining method using Phylip 3.66. Haplotype and haplogroup diversity values were calculated.

Link

2 comments:

Unknown said...

very interesting:

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/121660348/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

The Madjars are a previously unstudied population from Kazakhstan who practice a form of local exogamy in which wives are brought in from neighboring tribes, but husbands are not, so the paternal lineages remain genetically isolated within the population. Their name bears a striking resemblance to the Magyars who have inhabited Hungary for over a millennium, but whose previous history is poorly understood. We have now carried out a genetic analysis of the population structure and relationships of the Madjars, and in particular have sought to test whether or not they show a genetic link with the Magyars. We concentrated on paternal lineages because of their isolation within the Madjars and sampled males representing all extant male lineages unrelated for more than eight generations (n = 45) in the Torgay area of Kazakhstan. The Madjars show evidence of extensive genetic drift, with 24/45 carrying the same 12-STR haplotype within haplogroup G. Genetic distances based on haplogroup frequencies were used to compare the Madjars with 37 other populations and showed that they were closest to the Hungarian population rather than their geographical neighbors. Although this finding could result from chance, it is striking and suggests that there could have been genetic contact between the ancestors of the Madjars and Magyars, and thus that modern Hungarians may trace their ancestry to Central Asia, instead of the Eastern Uralic region as previously thought. Am J Phys Anthropol 2009. © 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Unknown said...

" which was found in 2 of 4 ancient Magyars "

It was actually 2 of 7. "The fact that two of seven ancient samples possessed the Tat C allele"

http://www2.sci.u-szeged.hu/fokozatok/PDF/Kovacsne_Csanyi_Bernadett/tezisfuzet_angol_CsanyiB.pdf