title: Extreme genetic heterogeneity among the nine major tribal Taiwanese island populations detected with a new generation Y23 STR system.
abstract: The Taiwanese aborigines have been regarded as the source populations for the Austronesian expansion that populated Oceania to the east and Madagascar off Africa to the West. Although a number of genetic studies have been performed on some of these important tribes, the scope of the investigations has been limited, varying in the specific populations examined as well as the maker systems employed. This has made direct comparison among studies difficult. In an attempt to alleviate this lacuna, we investigate, for the first time, the genetic diversity of all nine major Taiwanese aboriginal tribes (Ami, Atayal, Bunun, Rukai, Paiwan, Saisat, Puyuma, Tsou and Yami) utilizing a new generation multiplex Y-STR system that allows for the genotyping of 23 loci from a single amplification reaction. This comprehensive approach examining 293 individuals from all nine main tribes with the same battery of forensic markers provides for the much-needed equivalent data essential for comparative analyses. Our results have uncovered that these nine major aboriginal populations exhibit limited intrapopulation genetic diversity and are highly heterogeneous from each other, possibly the result of endogamy, isolation, drift and/or unique ancestral populations. Specifically, genetic diversity, discrimination capacity, fraction of unique haplotypes and the most frequent haplotypes differ among the nine tribes, with the Tsou possessing the lowest values for the first three of these parameters. The phylogenetic analyses performed indicate that the genetic diversity among all nine tribes is greater than the diversity observed among the worldwide reference populations examined, indicating an extreme case of genetic heterogeneity among these tribes that have lived as close neighbors for thousands of years confined to the limited geographical area of an island.
authors.affiliation: Department of Forensic Medicine, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Zhengzhou University, China.
authors.forename: Zhaoshu
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zeng
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO, United States. Electronic address: RBertrand@coloradocollege.edu.
authors.forename: Ralph
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Garcia-Bertrand
authors.affiliation: Department of Dentistry, New York University, New York, NY, United States.
authors.forename: Silvia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Calderon
authors.affiliation: Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology, Zhengzhou Central Hospital, Zhengzhou University, China.
authors.forename: Li
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Department of Forensic Medicine, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Zhengzhou University, China.
authors.forename: Mingxia
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Zhong
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO, United States.
authors.forename: Rene J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Herrera
mesh_terms: D005006:Ethnicity / Q000235:genetics*; D053803:Forensic Genetics; D005787:Gene Frequency; D018740:Genetic Heterogeneity; D005828:Genetics, Population; D006239:Haplotypes; D006801:Humans; D018895:Microsatellite Repeats; D010802:Phylogeny; D013624:Taiwan
keywords: PowerPlex(®) Y23 STR; Short tandem repeat (STR); Taiwan aborigine; Y chromosome