Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations share a common pool of Y-chromosome biallelic haplotypes
- M. F. Hammer*†‡,
- A. J. Redd*†,
- E. T. Wood*†,
- M. R. Bonner*,
- H. Jarjanazi*,
- T. Karafet*,
- S. Santachiara-Benerecetti¶,
- A. Oppenheim‖,
- M. A. Jobling**,
- T. Jenkins‡‡,
- H. Ostrer††, and
- B. Bonné-Tamir§
- *Laboratory of Molecular Systematics and Evolution, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721; ¶Department of Genetics, Università degli Studi di Pavia, Pavia 27100, Italy; ‖Hadassah Medical School, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 91120, Israel; **Department of Genetics, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH, England; ‡‡SAMIR, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg 2000, South Africa; ††Department of Pediatrics, New York University Medical Center, New York, NY 10016; and §Department of Human Genetics, Sackler School of Medicine, Ramat Aviv 69978, Israel
-
Communicated by Arno G. Motulsky, University of Washington, Seattle, WA (received for review November 17, 1999)
Abstract
Haplotypes constructed from Y-chromosome markers were used to trace the paternal origins of the Jewish Diaspora. A set of 18 biallelic polymorphisms was genotyped in 1,371 males from 29 populations, including 7 Jewish (Ashkenazi, Roman, North African, Kurdish, Near Eastern, Yemenite, and Ethiopian) and 16 non-Jewish groups from similar geographic locations. The Jewish populations were characterized by a diverse set of 13 haplotypes that were also present in non-Jewish populations from Africa, Asia, and Europe. A series of analyses was performed to address whether modern Jewish Y-chromosome diversity derives mainly from a common Middle Eastern source population or from admixture with neighboring non-Jewish populations during and after the Diaspora. Despite their long-term residence in different countries and isolation from one another, most Jewish populations were not significantly different from one another at the genetic level. Admixture estimates suggested low levels of European Y-chromosome gene flow into Ashkenazi and Roman Jewish communities. A multidimensional scaling plot placed six of the seven Jewish populations in a relatively tight cluster that was interspersed with Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations, including Palestinians and Syrians. Pairwise differentiation tests further indicated that these Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations were not statistically different. The results support the hypothesis that the paternal gene pools of Jewish communities from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East descended from a common Middle Eastern ancestral population, and suggest that most Jewish communities have remained relatively isolated from neighboring non-Jewish communities during and after the Diaspora.
Footnotes
-
↵† M.F.H., A.J.R., and E.T.W. contributed equally to this work.
-
↵‡ To whom reprint requests should be addressed at: Laboratory of Molecular Systematics and Evolution, Biosciences West Room 239, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721. E-mail: mhammer{at}u.arizona.edu.
-
Data deposition: The sequences reported in this paper have been deposited in the GenBank database (accession nos. AF257063 and AF257064).
-
Article published online before print: Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 10.1073/pnas.100115997.
-
Article and publication date are at www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.100115997
Abbreviations
- mtDNA,
- mitochondrial DNA;
- NRY,
- nonrecombining portion of the Y chromosome;
- MDS,
- multidimensional scaling;
- AMOVA,
- analyses of molecular variance
- Received November 17, 1999.
- Accepted March 15, 2000.
- Copyright © The National Academy of Sciences





