title: Genetics and the history of the Samaritans: Y-chromosomal microsatellites and genetic affinity between Samaritans and Cohanim.
abstract: The Samaritans are a group of some 750 indigenous Middle Eastern people, about half of whom live in Holon, a suburb of Tel Aviv, and the other half near Nablus. The Samaritan population is believed to have numbered more than a million in late Roman times but less than 150 in 1917. The ancestry of the Samaritans has been subject to controversy from late Biblical times to the present. In this study, liquid chromatography/electrospray ionization/quadrupole ion trap mass spectrometry was used to allelotype 13 Y-chromosomal and 15 autosomal microsatellites in a sample of 12 Samaritans chosen to have as low a level of relationship as possible, and 461 Jews and non-Jews. Estimation of genetic distances between the Samaritans and seven Jewish and three non-Jewish populations from Israel, as well as populations from Africa, Pakistan, Turkey, and Europe, revealed that the Samaritans were closely related to Cohanim. This result supports the position of the Samaritans that they are descendants from the tribes of Israel dating to before the Assyrian exile in 722-720 BCE. In concordance with previously published single-nucleotide polymorphism haplotypes, each Samaritan family, with the exception of the Samaritan Cohen lineage, was observed to carry a distinctive Y-chromosome short tandem repeat haplotype that was not more than one mutation removed from the six-marker Cohen modal haplotype.
authors: Institute of Functional Genomics, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany and Center for Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA.
authors: Peter J
authors: PJ
authors: Oefner
authors: Institute of Functional Genomics, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany.
authors: Georg
authors: G
authors: Hölzi
authors: Stanford Genome Technology Center, Palo Alto, CA.
authors: Piedong
authors: P
authors: Shen
authors: Pulmonary Institute, Assaf Harofeh Medical Center, Zerifin, Israel.
authors: Isaac
authors: I
authors: Shpirer
authors: Department of Medicine-C, Barzilai Medical Center, Ashkelon, Israel.
authors: Dov
authors: D
authors: Gefel
authors: Department of Genetics, Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Rehovot, Israel.
authors: Tal
authors: T
authors: Lavi
authors: Department of Genetics, Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Rehovot, Israel.
authors: Eilon
authors: E
authors: Woolf
authors: Department of Genetics, Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Rehovot, Israel.
authors: Jonathan
authors: J
authors: Cohen
authors: Department of Genetics, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA.
authors: Cengiz
authors: C
authors: Cinnioglu
authors: Department of Genetics, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA.
authors: Peter A
authors: PA
authors: Underhill
authors: Department of Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA.
authors: Noah A
authors: NA
authors: Rosenberg
authors: Institute of Functional Genomics, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany.
authors: Jochen
authors: J
authors: Hochrein
authors: Department of Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA. AND AncestryDNA, San Francisco, CA.
authors: Julie M
authors: JM
authors: Granka
authors: Department of Genetics, Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Rehovot, Israel.
authors: Jossi
authors: J
authors: Hillel
authors: Department of Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA.
authors: Marcus W
authors: MW
authors: Feldman
mesh_terms: D041322:Chromosomes, Human, Y / Q000235:genetics*; D014644:Genetic Variation / Q000235:genetics; D005828:Genetics, Population; D005838:Genotype; D049690:History, Ancient; D006801:Humans; D007557:Israel / Q000208:ethnology; D007585:Jews / Q000235:genetics* / Q000266:history; D008297:Male; D018895:Microsatellite Repeats / Q000235:genetics*; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide / Q000235:genetics; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D021241:Spectrometry, Mass, Electrospray Ionization