Disclosing the genetic history of male lineages present in populations from Tierra del Fuego

RODRIGUES P, VELAZQUEZ I, RIBEIRO J, SIMÃO F, AMORIM A, CARVALHO E, PAROLIN ML, GUSMÃO L, GOMES V

Lisboa

Congreso; 19th Meeting Portugaliae. Phenotypic Manifestation of Geneic Heterogenet; 2022

Universidade do Porto

Tierra del Fuego is an archipelago located in the southernmost part of South America shared by Chile and Argentina. This archipelago has always been populated only by Native American groups, but this status changed following its annexation by Chile and Argentina in the late 19th century, prompting a severe demographic makeover. In order to attain a more comprehensive insight into the implications of the historical events on the Fueguian demography, we characterized the male lineages genotyping 23 Y-STRs and 52 Y-SNPs from 196 individuals residing in Río Grande and Ushuaia. Both haplotype and haplogroup diversities displayed high values, indicating the absence of a strong founder effect. The Fueguian dataset presented a higher frequency of haplogroups of Eurasian origin over Native American and African ones. The results of the comparative analyses with Latin American populations have demonstrated similarities with other populations from Argentina. Regarding Eurasian populations, Tierra del Fuego presented similarities between Northern Italian, Iberian, and Tyrolean populations. In an in-depth analysis of the haplogroup R-M269 subtypes, Tierra del Fuego displayed close proximity to the Iberian Peninsula. In a nutshell, the results obtained from the Y-chromosomal data analyses are in line with the historical records of Tierra del Fuego and reflect the dramatic demographic change led mainly by newcomers with European origin in the southernmost region of the American continent.