Abstract

The Roma population is a European ethnic minority characterized by recent and multiple dispersals and founder effects. After their origin in South Asia around 1,500 years ago, they migrated West. In Europe, they diverged into ethnolinguistically distinct migrant groups that spread across the continent. Previous genetic studies based on genome-wide data and uniparental markers detected Roma founder events and West-Eurasian gene flow. However, to the best of our knowledge, it has not been assessed whether these demographic processes have equally affected both sexes in the population. The present study uses the largest and most comprehensive dataset of complete mitochondrial and Y chromosome Roma sequences to unravel the sex-biased patterns that have shaped their genetic history. The results show that the Roma maternal genetic pool carries a higher lineage diversity from South Asia, as opposed to a single paternal South Asian lineage. Nonetheless, the European gene flow events mainly occurred through the maternal lineages; however, a signal of this gene flow is also traceable in the paternal lineages. We also detect a higher female migration rate among European Roma groups. Altogether, these results suggest that sociocultural factors influenced the emergence of sex-biased genetic patterns at global and local scales in the Roma population through time.

Details

Title
Sex-biased patterns shaped the genetic history of Roma
Author
García-Fernández, C 1 ; Font-Porterias, N 1 ; Kučinskas, V 2 ; Sukarova-Stefanovska, E 3 ; Pamjav, H 4 ; Makukh, H 5 ; Dobon, B 1 ; Bertranpetit, J 1 ; Netea, M G 6 ; Calafell, F 1 ; Comas, D 1 

 Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Institute of Evolutionary Biology (UPF-CSIC), Department of Experimental and Health Sciences, Barcelona, Spain (GRID:grid.5612.0) (ISNI:0000 0001 2172 2676) 
 Biomedical Science Institute, Vilnius University, Department of Human and Medical Genetics, Faculty of Medicine, Vilnius, Lithuania (GRID:grid.6441.7) (ISNI:0000 0001 2243 2806) 
 Academy of Sciences and Arts of the Republic of North Macedonia – MASA, Research Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology “Georgi D. Efremov”, Skopje, Republic of North Macedonia (GRID:grid.6441.7) 
 Hungarian Institute for Forensic Sciences, Institute of Forensic Genetics, Budapest, Hungary (GRID:grid.418695.7) (ISNI:0000 0004 0482 5122) 
 Ukrainian Academy of Medical Sciences, Institute of Hereditary Pathology, Lviv, Ukraine (GRID:grid.418751.e) (ISNI:0000 0004 0385 8977) 
 Radboud University Medical Center, Department of Internal Medicine and Radboud Center for Infectious Diseases, Nijmegen, the Netherlands (GRID:grid.10417.33) (ISNI:0000 0004 0444 9382); University of Medicine and Pharmacy Craiova, Department of Human Genetics, Craiova, Romania (GRID:grid.413055.6) (ISNI:0000 0004 0384 6757); University of Bonn, Department for Genomics and Immunoregulation, Life and Medical Sciences Institute (LIMES), Bonn, Germany (GRID:grid.10388.32) (ISNI:0000 0001 2240 3300) 
Publication year
2020
Publication date
2020
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
e-ISSN
20452322
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2439505628
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.