Population Structure and Genetic Differentiation Among the Substructured Vyshya Caste Population in Comparison to the Other Populations of Andhra Pradesh, India

LAKSHMI, N.; DEMARCHI, DARIO ALFREDO; VEERRAJU, P.; RAO, T. V.; DARIO A. DEMARCHI

ANNALS OF HUMAN BIOLOGY

Taylor & Francis

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2002 vol. 29 p. 538 - 549

0301-4460

Summary. Objectives: The present paper focuses on the study of the patterns of geneticmicrodi€ erentiation among one of the substructured caste populations of Andhra Pradesh,namely Vysya, with reference to 17 other Telugu speaking populations from the same regionof India.Subjects and methods: A total of 302 individuals from the three Vysya subgroups (101 ofArya Vysya, 100 from Kalinga Vysya and 101 from Thrivarnika) were typed in 17 bloodgroups and protein polymorphisms. Nei?s gene diversity analysis, as well as neighbourjoiningtree and UPGMA cluster diagrams, derived from standard genetic distances, Rmatrixanalysis and a regression model for investigating the patterns of external gene ¯owand genetic drift due to isolation under the island model, were done at two levels: (1)considering only the three Vysya populations and (2) considering common loci among 20populations of Andhra Pradesh.Results: Seven of the 17 systems investigated were found to be monomorphic among all thethree Vysya groups. The UPGMA tree and bidimensional scaling of the D2 distancesderived from R-matrix analysis show a very distinct cluster of Vysya populations. Applicationof the model of regression of average heterozygosity versus the distance of populationsfrom the centroid shows the three Vysya populations placed as clear outliers above thetheoretical regression line.Conclusions: Di€fferent approaches employed in this study give support to the hypothesis ofdi€fferent origin and/or demographic story for the three Vysya groups compared with otherpopulations of Andhra Pradesh.