Insights into the genetic structure and diversity of 38 South Asian Indians from deep whole-genome sequencing.
South Asia possesses a significant amount of genetic diversity due to considerable intergroup differences in culture and language. There have been numerous reports on the genetic structure of Asian Indians, although these have mostly relied on genotyping microarrays or targeted sequencing of the mitochondria and Y chromosomes. Asian Indians in Singapore are primarily descendants of immigrants from Dravidian-language-speaking states in south India, and 38 individuals from the general population underwent deep whole-genome sequencing with a target coverage of 30X as part of the Singapore Sequencing Indian Project (SSIP). The genetic structure and diversity of these samples were compared against samples from the Singapore Sequencing Malay Project and populations in Phase 1 of the 1,000 Genomes Project (1 KGP). SSIP samples exhibited greater intra-population genetic diversity and possessed higher heterozygous-to-homozygous genotype ratio than other Asian populations. When compared against a panel of well-defined Asian Indians, the genetic makeup of the SSIP samples was closely related to South Indians. However, even though the SSIP samples clustered distinctly from the Europeans in the global population structure analysis with autosomal SNPs, eight samples were assigned to mitochondrial haplogroups that were predominantly present in Europeans and possessed higher European admixture than the remaining samples. An analysis of the relative relatedness between SSIP with two archaic hominins (Denisovan, Neanderthal) identified higher ancient admixture in East Asian populations than in SSIP. The data resource for these samples is publicly available and is expected to serve as a valuable complement to the South Asian samples in Phase 3 of 1 KGP.
Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
Lai-Ping
LP
Wong
Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
Jason Kuan-Han
JK
Lai
Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
Woei-Yuh
WY
Saw
Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
Rick Twee-Hee
RT
Ong
Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
Anthony Youzhi
AY
Cheng
Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
Nisha Esakimuthu
NE
Pillai
Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore, Singapore; NUS Graduate School for Integrative Science and Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
Xuanyao
X
Liu
Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
Wenting
W
Xu
Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
Peng
P
Chen
Genome Institute of Singapore, Agency for Science, Technology and Research, Singapore.
Jia-Nee
JN
Foo
Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
Linda Wei-Lin
LW
Tan
Pharmacogenetics Laboratory, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
Seok-Hwee
SH
Koo
Cancer Science Institute of Singapore, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
Richie
R
Soong
Department of Biochemistry, National University of Singapore, Singapore; Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
Markus Rene
MR
Wenk
Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
Wei-Yen
WY
Lim
Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore, Singapore; Genome Institute of Singapore, Agency for Science, Technology and Research, Singapore.
Chiea-Chuen
CC
Khor
Life Sciences Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
Peter
P
Little
Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
Kee-Seng
KS
Chia
Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore, Singapore; NUS Graduate School for Integrative Science and Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore; Genome Institute of Singapore, Agency for Science, Technology and Research, Singapore; Life Sciences Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore; Department of Statistics and Applied Probability, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
Yik-Ying
YY
Teo
D014644:Genetic Variation; D005828:Genetics, Population; D015894:Genome, Human; D006239:Haplotypes; D006801:Humans; D007194:India; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide