Limited but detectable African genetic contribution in the Agentinean extant gen pool.

CORACH D.; BOBILLO C; SALA A; ALECHINE E; CAPUTO M; PARSON W; DE KNIJFF P; KAYSER M

Cape Town

Congreso; Joint International Conference of the African and Southern African Societies of Human Genetics; 2011

African and Southern African Societies of Human Genetics

The extant Argentinean population is the result of multi-ethnic genetic contributions, including native american, european and african. The overall distribution of each component had varied widely and in some cases the evidently visible traits had disappeared, however at the genetic level it is possible to trace these contributions. Although, it has been accepted that over 150,000 western sub-saharan africans were forcedly brought to the now a days argentinean territory between late 16th century and 1813, when slavery was abolished, no evident african phenotypes are detectable in the present day argentinean population. Aiming to quantitate the african contribution a sample set of 246 unrelated volunteer male donors belonging to three geographical regions were analyzed. Genetic typing was performed by means of 24 autosomal ancestry sensitive SNP markers, 25 Y-SNPs, mitochondrial haplogroups defined by the complete control region sequence and coding regions SNPs, 15 autosomal STRs, 12 Y-STRs and 10 X-STRs. Different contributions were detected by the diverse genetic systems employed. In average, the three geographical region considered showed that the african contribution was: autosomal markers 4,15%, mtDNA 2,0% and NRY markers 0,9%. Since at the colonial time the africans and african descendents populations were relevant in comparison with the other ethnic groups, it remains a mystery why this contribution is so reduced at present.Diverse hypothesis have been proposed mostly based on the early time of slavery abolishment and the freedom of wombs law applied in this country since 1813. These hypotheses are under investigation at present.