mtDNA of Gelao from Southwest China

Forensic Sci Int Genet. 2010 May 20. [Epub ahead of print]

Mitochondrial DNA polymorphisms in Gelao ethnic group residing in Southwest China.

Liu C, Wang SY, Zhao M, Xu ZY, Hu YH, Chen F, Zhang RZ, Gao GF, Yu YS, Kong QP.

Abstract

Gelao ethnic group, an aboriginal population residing in southwest China, has undergone a long and complex evolutionary process. To investigate the genetic structure of this ancient ethnic group, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) polymorphisms of 102 Gelao individuals were collected and analyzed in this study. With the aid of the information extracted from control-region hypervariable segments (HVSs) I and II as well as some necessary coding-region segments, phylogenetic status of all mtDNAs under study were determined by means of classifying into various defined haplogroups. The southern-prevalent haplogroups B, R9, and M7 account for 45.1% of the gene pool, whereas northern-prevalent haplogroups A, D, G, N9, and M8 consist of 39.2%. Haplogroup distribution indicates that the Gelao bears signatures of southern populations and possesses some regional characters. In the PC map, Gelao clusters together with populations with Bai-Yue tribe origin as well as the local Han and the Miao. The results demonstrate the complexity of Gelao population and the data can well supplement the China mtDNA database.

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Origin of Gelong from Hainan island

Related: Portraits of ethnic groups of China including a portrait of Gelao, the mainland relatives of the Gelong and Li who are an indigenous group of Hainan.

Note that Hlai is the Li's own self-appellation. Wikipedia article on Kadai (Daic) languages. Note that haplogroup O1 has been linked to Daic languages, which would agree with the results on the Gelong people. Tai-Kadai people form their own autosomal cluster, demonstrated their common genetic origins.

J Hum Genet. doi:10.1038/jhg.2010.50.

Genetic origin of Kadai-speaking Gelong people on Hainan island viewed from Y chromosomes.

Li D, Sun Y, Lu Y, Mustavich LF, Ou C, Zhou Z, Li S, Jin L, Li H.

The government of China defined 56 official ethnicities for the ethnic groups in China for political purposes; however, there are many more than 56 ethnic groups. Therefore, similar groups must be pooled for registry, and the so-called ethnicity identification is an important official mission in China. Here, we showed how genetics can help in the ethnicity identification for the Gelong people on Hainan Island. The Gelong speak a Kadai language whose other speakers (officially of the Gelao ethnicity) are all far in the southwest of China. Being registered as a Han ethnicity, the Gelong lost all the benefits assigned to the minorities. Y-chromosome typing was performed in a sample of 78 individuals. Twenty single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and seven short tandem repeats (STRs) were typed and eight haplogroups were detected, among which haplogroup O1a(*) was the most dominant. Compared with the Y haplogroups of the populations in south China, the Gelong were found to be closest to the Gelao and the Hlai using principal components (PCs) analysis, dendrogram clustering and STR networks. The genetic similarity between the Gelong and the Hlai may have resulted from the gene flow during thousands of years of neighboring history on Hainan Island, whereas the similarity between the Gelong and the Gelao may have resulted from their common ancestry because there is less possibility of gene flow over such a far distance. As both linguistic and genetic evidence support the similarity between the Gelong and the Gelao, we suggest that the Gelong register as Gelao for their official ethnicity. However, this identification is invalid until it is accepted by the Gelong people themselves and the Hainan government.

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