title: The genomic ancestry of individuals from different geographical regions of Brazil is more uniform than expected.
abstract: Based on pre-DNA racial/color methodology, clinical and pharmacological trials have traditionally considered the different geographical regions of Brazil as being very heterogeneous. We wished to ascertain how such diversity of regional color categories correlated with ancestry. Using a panel of 40 validated ancestry-informative insertion-deletion DNA polymorphisms we estimated individually the European, African and Amerindian ancestry components of 934 self-categorized White, Brown or Black Brazilians from the four most populous regions of the Country. We unraveled great ancestral diversity between and within the different regions. Especially, color categories in the northern part of Brazil diverged significantly in their ancestry proportions from their counterparts in the southern part of the Country, indicating that diverse regional semantics were being used in the self-classification as White, Brown or Black. To circumvent these regional subjective differences in color perception, we estimated the general ancestry proportions of each of the four regions in a form independent of color considerations. For that, we multiplied the proportions of a given ancestry in a given color category by the official census information about the proportion of that color category in the specific region, to arrive at a "total ancestry" estimate. Once such a calculation was performed, there emerged a much higher level of uniformity than previously expected. In all regions studied, the European ancestry was predominant, with proportions ranging from 60.6% in the Northeast to 77.7% in the South. We propose that the immigration of six million Europeans to Brazil in the 19th and 20th centuries--a phenomenon described and intended as the "whitening of Brazil"--is in large part responsible for dissipating previous ancestry dissimilarities that reflected region-specific population histories. These findings, of both clinical and sociological importance for Brazil, should also be relevant to other countries with ancestrally admixed populations.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Bioquímica e Imunologia, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil. spena@dcc.ufmg.br
authors.forename: Sérgio D J
authors.initials: SD
authors.lastname: Pena
authors.forename: Giuliano
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Di Pietro
authors.forename: Mateus
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Fuchshuber-Moraes
authors.forename: Julia Pasqualini
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Genro
authors.forename: Mara H
authors.initials: MH
authors.lastname: Hutz
authors.forename: Fernanda de Souza Gomes
authors.initials: Fde S
authors.lastname: Kehdy
authors.forename: Fabiana
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Kohlrausch
authors.forename: Luiz Alexandre Viana
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Magno
authors.forename: Raquel Carvalho
authors.initials: RC
authors.lastname: Montenegro
authors.forename: Manoel Odorico
authors.initials: MO
authors.lastname: Moraes
authors.forename: Maria Elisabete Amaral
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: de Moraes
authors.forename: Milene Raiol
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: de Moraes
authors.forename: Elida B
authors.initials: EB
authors.lastname: Ojopi
authors.forename: Jamila A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Perini
authors.forename: Clarice
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Racciopi
authors.forename: Andrea Kely Campos
authors.initials: AK
authors.lastname: Ribeiro-Dos-Santos
authors.forename: Fabrício
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Rios-Santos
authors.forename: Marco A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Romano-Silva
authors.forename: Vinicius A
authors.initials: VA
authors.lastname: Sortica
authors.forename: Guilherme
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Suarez-Kurtz
mesh_terms: D001938:Brazil / Q000208:ethnology; D015331:Cohort Studies; D051544:Cytochrome P-450 CYP3A / Q000235:genetics; D005260:Female; D005787:Gene Frequency; D015894:Genome, Human; D005838:Genotype; D005843:Geography; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D056186:Metagenomics; D006899:Mixed Function Oxygenases / Q000235:genetics; D058974:Phylogeography; D044469:Racial Groups / Q000208:ethnology / Q000235:genetics*; D012880:Skin Pigmentation / Q000235:genetics / Q000502:physiology; D064417:Vitamin K Epoxide Reductases
chemical_list: D006899:Mixed Function Oxygenases; C510164:CYP3A5 protein, human; D051544:Cytochrome P-450 CYP3A; D064417:Vitamin K Epoxide Reductases