title: Reconstructing Roma history from genome-wide data.
abstract: The Roma people, living throughout Europe and West Asia, are a diverse population linked by the Romani language and culture. Previous linguistic and genetic studies have suggested that the Roma migrated into Europe from South Asia about 1,000-1,500 years ago. Genetic inferences about Roma history have mostly focused on the Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA. To explore what additional information can be learned from genome-wide data, we analyzed data from six Roma groups that we genotyped at hundreds of thousands of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). We estimate that the Roma harbor about 80% West Eurasian ancestry-derived from a combination of European and South Asian sources-and that the date of admixture of South Asian and European ancestry was about 850 years before present. We provide evidence for Eastern Europe being a major source of European ancestry, and North-west India being a major source of the South Asian ancestry in the Roma. By computing allele sharing as a measure of linkage disequilibrium, we estimate that the migration of Roma out of the Indian subcontinent was accompanied by a severe founder event, which appears to have been followed by a major demographic expansion after the arrival in Europe.
authors.affiliation: Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America. moorjani@fas.harvard.edu
authors.forename: Priya
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Moorjani
authors.forename: Nick
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Patterson
authors.forename: Po-Ru
authors.initials: PR
authors.lastname: Loh
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lipson
authors.forename: Péter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Kisfali
authors.forename: Bela I
authors.initials: BI
authors.lastname: Melegh
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bonin
authors.forename: Ludevít
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Kádaši
authors.forename: Olaf
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Rieß
authors.forename: Bonnie
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Berger
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Reich
authors.forename: Béla
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Melegh
mesh_terms: D001208:Asia / Q000208:ethnology; D005006:Ethnicity / Q000235:genetics* / Q000266:history*; D005060:Europe / Q000208:ethnology; D018703:Founder Effect; D051456:Gene Flow / Q000235:genetics; D015894:Genome, Human; D049691:History, Medieval; D006801:Humans; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide / Q000235:genetics