Post by Bozur on Feb 26, 2010 14:27:13 GMT -5
December 09, 2009
Jews intermediate between Middle Eastern and European populations (Kopelman et al. 2009)
Fairly interesting that at K=5 a Palestinian cluster emerges, and Jews show mixed affiliations with this cluster and the European one. This is also consistent with the idea that different Jewish populations have a Levantine element in common, and have also undergone admixture with European (or more properly European-like) populations.
A weakness of the study is that it does not look into Gentile populations in the region between Italy and Palestine.
The main issue in Jewish origins is no longer whether they are of Middle Eastern or European (or European-like) origin. It seems pretty clear by now that they are both. The main issue is to determine the origin of their Middle Eastern and European components. This study does offer some new insight by showing the affinity between Jews and Palestinians at K=5 (purple); however the origin of the European (or European-like) component remains elusive.
BMC Genetics 2009, 10:80 doi:10.1186/1471-2156-10-80
Genomic microsatellites identify shared Jewish ancestry intermediate between Middle Eastern and European populations
Naama M Kopelman et al.
Abstract
Background: Genetic studies have often produced conflicting results on the question of whether distant Jewish populations in different geographic locations share greater genetic similarity to each other or instead, to nearby non-Jewish populations. We perform a genome-wide population-genetic study of Jewish
populations, analyzing 678 autosomal microsatellite loci in 78 individuals from four Jewish groups together with similar data on 321 individuals from 12 non-Jewish Middle Eastern and European populations.
Results: We find that the Jewish populations show a high level of genetic similarity to each other, clustering together in several types of analysis of population structure. Further, Bayesian clustering, neighbor-joining trees, and multidimensional scaling place the Jewish populations as intermediate between the non-Jewish Middle Eastern and European populations.
Conclusion: These results support the view that the Jewish populations largely share a common Middle Eastern ancestry and that over their history they have undergone varying degrees of admixture with non-Jewish populations of European descent.
Link (pdf)
www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1471-2156-10-80.pdf
dienekes.blogspot.com/2009/12/jews-intermediate-between-middle.html