Native American Y- STR haplotyping: its forensic relevance in Argentina

ANDREA SALA; CECILIA BOBILLO; MARIELA CAPUTO; MC MARTI; EGUENIA ALECHINE; DANIEL CORACH

Melbourne

Congreso; 25th World Congress of the International Society for Forensic Genetics,; 2013

ISFH

The Argentinean population is the result of complex admixture events. Majorinteractions took place between Native Americans people and European conquerors andimmigrants. At present, autochthonous people represent only 2.3% of the extantpopulation. Due to discrimination and poverty these groups tend to live in socialisolation and prone to perpetrate criminal acts, as in any other social group. Taking intoaccount that those populations show differential allele or haplotype frequencies, itsresearch is relevant for the forensic interpretation. Aiming to investigate theinformativeness of the Y-STR markers, a set of 236 samples of south Amerindian wereanalyzed, including the ethnic groups: Toba, Pilaga, Wichi and Mocovi, inhabitingNorthern and central Argentina. Haplotype analysis comprised YHRD minimalhaplotype plus DYS437, DYS438 and DYS439 Y-STRs. The SNP M3-Q3 was typed inorder to discriminate the most frequent Amerindian haplogroup. Out of 202 Q1a3ahaplotypes, 135 were unique (66.83%), 17 haplotypes were share between differentgroups with frequencies ranging 0.99% to 10.9%. From these, only three were found outof Argentina, in isolated cases from Native American people or admixed populations inAmerica. None of these haplotypes were found in Argentinean males of Europeanancestry.Previous investigation allowed us to find some particular mitochondrial haplotypes thattogether with Y-STRs information might provide a clue indicative of ethnicity of asample. Such information might provide the forensic lab about the references databasesto be employed for statistical analysis.