23/09/13

AJHG - Abraham's Children in the Genome Era: Major Jewish Diaspora Populations Comprise Distinct Genetic Clusters with Shared Middle Eastern

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Copyright 2010 The American Society of Human Genetics All rights reserved. The American Journal of Human Genetics, Volume 86, Issue 6, 850-859, 03 June 2010 doi:10.1016/j.ajhg.2010.04.015
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Abraham's Children in the Genome Era: Major Jewish Diaspora Populations Comprise Distinct Genetic Clusters with Shared Middle Eastern Ancestry
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Articles by Gil Atzmon Articles by Harry Ostrer

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1 2

Francesco Palamara 4 , Bernice Morrow 2 , Eitan Friedman 5 , Carole Oddoux 3 , Edward

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Department of Medicine, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY 10461, USA Department of Genetics, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY 10461, USA

3 Human Genetics Program, Department of Pediatrics, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY 10016, USA 4 5

Department of Computer Science, Columbia University, New York, NY 10025, USA

The Susanne Levy Gertner Oncogenetics Unit, the Danek Gertner Institute of Human Genetics, Chaim Sheba Medical Center, 52621, Tel-Hashomer, and the Sackler School of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, 69978 Tel-Aviv, Israel

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Corresponding author
6

These authors contributed equally to this work

7 Present address: Center for Genome Informatics, New Jersey Medical School, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, Newark, NJ 07103, USA

Abstract For more than a century, Jews and non-Jews alike have tried to define the relatedness of contemporary Jewish people. Previous genetic studies of blood group and serum markers suggested that Jewish groups had Middle Eastern origin with greater genetic similarity between paired Jewish populations. However, these and successor studies of monoallelic Y chromosomal and mitochondrial genetic markers did not resolve the issues of within and between-group Jewish genetic identity. Here, genome-wide analysis of seven Jewish groups (Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian, Italian, Turkish, Greek, and Ashkenazi) and comparison with non-Jewish groups demonstrated distinctive Jewish population clusters, each with shared Middle Eastern ancestry, proximity to contemporary Middle Eastern populations, and variable degrees of European and North African admixture. Two major groups were identified by principal component, phylogenetic, and identity by descent (IBD) analysis: Middle Eastern Jews and European/Syrian Jews. The IBD segment sharing and the proximity of European Jews to each other and to southern European populations suggested similar origins for European Jewry and refuted large-scale genetic contributions of Central and Eastern European and Slavic populations to the formation of Ashkenazi Jewry. Rapid decay of IBD in Ashkenazi Jewish genomes was consistent with a severe bottleneck followed by large expansion, such as occurred with the so-called demographic miracle of population expansion from 50,000 people at the beginning of the 15th century to 5,000,000 people at the beginning of the 19th century. Thus, this study demonstrates that European/Syrian and Middle Eastern Jews represent a series of geographical isolates or clusters woven together by shared IBD genetic threads.

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23/09/13

AJHG - Abraham's Children in the Genome Era: Major Jewish Diaspora Populations Comprise Distinct Genetic Clusters with Shared Middle Eastern
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