Markers that discriminate between European and African ancestry show limited variation within Africa.
Markers informative for ancestry are necessary for admixture mapping and improving case-control association analyses. In particular, African Americans are an admixed population for which genetic studies require accurately evaluating admixture. This will require markers that can be used in African Americans to determine if a given genomic region is of European or African ancestry. This report shows that, despite studies indicating high intra-African sequence variation, markers with large inter-ethnic differences have only small variations in allele distribution among divergent African populations and should be valuable for evaluating admixture in complex disease genetic studies.
Collins-Schramm
Heather E
HE
Rowe Program in Human Genetics, Department of Biological Chemistry, University of California at Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616-8669, USA.
Kittles
Rick A
RA
Operario
Darwin J
DJ
Weber
James L
JL
Criswell
Lindsey A
LA
Cooper
Richard S
RS
Seldin
Michael F
MF
D000349:Africa / Q000208:ethnology; D005060:Europe / Q000208:ethnology; D005819:Genetic Markers; D014644:Genetic Variation; D006801:Humans
D005819:Genetic Markers