RESUMO
We investigated the genetic heterogeneity of 2354 individuals from the 9 provinces of Sicily. The genetic markers we used were HP, GC, TF, PI, and AK1 plus other previously tested polymorphisms, for a total of 24 independent markers. Distinct multivariate statistics were applied to verify the claimed genetic distinctiveness between extant eastern and western Sicilian populations. Our hypothesis stated that any diversity found between the two subpopulations would represent the signature of early colonization of the island by Greek and Phoenician peoples. Correspondence analysis showed that there was no clear geographic clustering within Sicily. The genetic distance matrix used for identifying the main genetic barriers revealed no east-west differences within the island's population, at least at the provincial level. FST estimates proved that the population subdivision did not affect the pattern of gene frequency variation; this implies that Sicily is effectively one panmictic unit. The bulk of our results confirm the absence of genetic differentiation between eastern and western Sicilians, and thus we reject the hypothesis of the subdivision of an ancient population in two areas.
Assuntos
Emigração e Imigração/história , Frequência do Gene/genética , Heterogeneidade Genética/história , Marcadores Genéticos/genética , Variação Genética/genética , Polimorfismo Genético/genética , Proteínas de Fase Aguda/genética , Adenilato Quinase/genética , Adulto , Feminino , História Antiga , Humanos , Masculino , Análise Multivariada , Fenótipo , Sicília , Proteína de Ligação a Vitamina D/genéticaRESUMO
Haptoglobin (HP), transferrin (TF), group-specific component (GC) and alpha-1-antitrypsin (PI) polymorphisms have been studied in Sardinia and the following gene frequencies have been found: HP*1 = 0.389, TF*C1 = 0.754, TF*C2 = 0.213, TF*C3 = 0.032, GC*1F = 0.193, GC*1S = 0.546, GC*2 = 0.260, PI*M1 = 0.607, PI*M2 = 0.221, PI*M3 = 0.126, PI*S = 0.040 and PI*Z = 0.006. These findings confirm the genetic uniqueness of Sardinians compared to the other Italian populations.
