title: Genetic profile characterization and population study of 21 autosomal STR in Chinese Kazak ethnic minority group.
abstract: Short tandem repeat loci have been recognized as useful tools in the routine forensic application and in recent decades, more and more new short tandem repeat (STR) loci have been constantly discovered, studied, and applied in forensic caseworks. In this study, we investigated the genetic polymorphisms of 21 STR loci in the Kazak ethnic minority as well as the genetic relationships between the Kazak ethnic minority and other populations. Allelic frequencies of 21 STR loci were obtained from 114 unrelated healthy Kazak individuals in the Ili Kazak Autonomous Prefecture, Xinjiang Uigur Autonomous Region of China. We observed a total of 159 alleles in the group with the allelic diversity values ranging from 0.0044 to 0.5088. The highest polymorphism was found at D19S433 locus and the lowest was found at D1S1627. Statistical analysis of the generated data indicated no deviation from Hardy-Weinberg equilibriums at all 21 STR loci. In order to estimate the population differentiation, allelic frequencies of all STR loci of the Kazak were compared with those of other neighboring populations using analysis of molecular variance method. Statistically significant differences were found between the studied population and other populations at 2-7 STR loci. A neighbor-joining tree was constructed based on allelic frequencies of the 21 STR loci and phylogenetic analysis indicates that the Kazak has a close genetic relationship with the Uigur ethnic group. The present results may provide useful information for forensic sciences and population genetics studies, and can also increase our understanding of the genetic background of this group. The present findings showed that all the 21 STR loci are highly genetically polymorphic in the Kazak group, which provided valuable population genetic data for the genetic information study, forensic human individual identification, and paternity tests.
authors.affiliation: The Department of Dermatology, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Medical School of Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Jing-Yi
authors.initials: JY
authors.lastname: Yuan
authors.forename: Xiao-Ye
authors.initials: XY
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Chun-Mei
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Shen
authors.forename: Wen-Juan
authors.initials: WJ
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Jiang-Wei
authors.initials: JW
authors.lastname: Yan
authors.forename: Hong-Dan
authors.initials: HD
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Hong-Wei
authors.initials: HW
authors.lastname: Pu
authors.forename: Yan-Li
authors.initials: YL
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Guang
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Yu-Dang
authors.initials: YD
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Hao-Tian
authors.initials: HT
authors.lastname: Meng
authors.forename: Hang
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Jing
authors.forename: Bo-Feng
authors.initials: BF
authors.lastname: Zhu
mesh_terms: D044466:Asian People / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics*; D002681:China; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D005828:Genetics, Population / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D015810:Linkage Disequilibrium; D018895:Microsatellite Repeats; D008913:Minority Groups; D010802:Phylogeny; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction; D011110:Polymorphism, Genetic; D025341:Principal Component Analysis
keywords: Genetic polymorphism; Interpopulation differentiation; Kazak ethnic group; STR