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. 2017 Aug 31;18(1):82.
doi: 10.1186/s12863-017-0547-x.

Refining the South Asian Origin of the Romani people

Bela I Melegh  1   2 , Zsolt Banfai  1   2 , Kinga Hadzsiev  1   2 , Attila Miseta  3 , Bela Melegh  4   5
Affiliations

Refining the South Asian Origin of the Romani people

Bela I Melegh et al. BMC Genet. .

Abstract

Background: Recent genetic studies based on genome-wide Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) data further investigated the history of Roma and suggested that the source of South Asian ancestry in Roma originates most likely from the Northwest region of India.

Methods: In this study, based also on genome-wide SNP data, we attempted to refine these findings using significantly larger number of European Roma samples, an extended dataset of Indian groups and involving Pakistani groups into the analyses. Our Roma data contained 179 Roma samples. Our extended Indian data consisted of 51 distinct Indian ethnic groups, which provided us a higher resolution of the population living on the Indian subcontinent. We used in this study principal component analysis and other ancestry estimating methods for the study of population relationships, several formal tests of admixture and an improved algorithm for investigating shared IBD segments in order to investigate the main sources of Roma ancestry.

Results: According to our analyses, Roma showed significant IBD sharing of 0.132 Mb with Northwest Indian ethnic groups. The most significant IBD sharings included ethnic groups of Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat states. However, we found also significant IBD sharing of 0.087 Mb with ethnic groups living in Pakistan, such as Balochi, Brahui, Burusho, Kalash, Makrani, Pashtun and Sindhi.

Conclusion: Our results show that Northwest India could play an important role in the South Asian ancestry of Roma, however, the origin of Romani people might include the area of Pakistan as well.

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Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
The map of India and the surrounding area. The location of investigated South Asian groups
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Relationship of Roma to European and South Asian Populations. The principal component analysis results were plotted on the two principal components with the highest eigenvalue. One symbol represents one individual. a Relationship of Roma to European and North Indian groups. b Relationship of Roma to European and South Indian groups. Separating North and South Indian populations have only practical purpose in order to give a better overview. Both graphs are the result of the same PCA
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
ADMIXTURE analysis of Roma, Europeans and South Asian populations. ADMIXTURE analysis results with K = 3 hypothetical ancestral groups. Each column represents one individual, each column group refers to a certain ethnic group
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Maximum likelihood tree of Europeans and South Asians. a Place of Roma on the ML tree using worldwide HapMap populations. b Relationship of Roma with European and Indian populations according to the ML tree constructed with TreeMix
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
ROLLOFF analysis results. Estimating the date of admixture of Roma with Europeans
Fig. 6
Fig. 6
ALDER analysis results. Weighted LD values computed in two separate 2-reference runs (Onge-CEU and Onge-TSI)
Fig. 7
Fig. 7
Population relationships based on identity-by-descent sharing estimation. We computed the genome-wide pairwise average shared IBD length between certain groups. a Average shared IBD length between Roma and Europeans. b Average shared IBD length between Roma and South Asians
Fig. 8
Fig. 8
Individual genome-wide HBD estimation in Roma and HGDP populations. Grouping of HGDP populations are based on their regional location. Each point represents one individual. Color coding of Roma and HGDP groups are described in the figure legend
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