Human Y-Chromosomal Dinucleotide Haplotypes In Europe, North Africa and West Asia Reveal Specific Patterns Of Geographical Distribution.

ABSTRACT

By studying 908 males from 33 locations of Europe, North Africa and West Asia, the variation of two Y-linked dinucleotide microsatellites was analyzed within three major chromosomal frames defined by mutations that are in or approach the condition of non-recurrence. Among the 223 haplotypes found, we selected a set of the ten most common haplotypes, representing 47.6% of the entire sample. We observed that they detect most of the information on inter-population differences. We calculated partial regression coefficients for haplotype frequencies as a function of latitude and longitude of the sampling locations and showed that some of them are distributed according to a cline. Furthermore, the incidence of the selected haplotypes was heterogenous, denoting the extremely high structuring of populations. These results indicate that Y chromosomal types defined by these markers here described can be considered optimal for population studies also because reliable frequency estimates can be obtained in small samples.