Background/aim: The Y-chromosome mainly consists of heterochromatin regions that have a father-to-son inheritance. Short tandem repeat polymorphic (STRP) markers distributed all over the chromosome provide the opportunity for investigations in forensic medicine and ancestral lineage studies. Due to the existence of wide varieties of geographical and ethnic groups in Iran, studying Y-STRP markers is necessary for further applications. Here we investigated the provinces of Mazandaran and Gilan for the first time. Materials and methods: Samples included 119 and 90 unrelated males from Mazandaran and Gilan, respectively. Using a PCR amplification kit, 17 Y-STRP markers were amplified and genotyping was conducted by capillary electrophoresis. Allele frequency, haplotype diversity (HD), and haplotype discrimination capacity (DC) were calculated. The populations were compared together and to neighboring countries including Afghanistan and Azerbaijan by F ST index. Results: A total of 204 unique haplotypes were observed. No uniqueness was observed between the two provinces. HD was 0.9993 and 0.9998 in Mazandaran and Gilan, respectively. DC was 0.9666 and 0.9888 for Mazandaran and Gilan, respectively. DYS385b and DYS391 had the most and least polymorphic content in both provinces, respectively. There was not a significant difference between these two provinces (F ST = 0.0006 and P = 0.00) and neighboring countries. Conclusion: The results highlight the effectiveness of these Y-STRP markers for male discrimination in the north of Iran. Using additional markers along with extended sample size would provide a better opportunity for removing matched haplotypes and introducing the best polymorphic markers in this specific population.

In this study, we reported for the first time Y chromosome haplotypes throughout Iran from 1097 unrelated Iranian males using the AmpFlSTRTM YfilerTM kit. 1094 out of the 1097 haplotypes identified were unique. The values of haplotype diversity (HD) and discriminating capacity (DC) were 1.00000 and 0.997, respectively. An analysis of genetic distance was performed by the molecular variance (AMOVA) and multidimensional scaling plots (MDS), showing that a statistically was observed significant difference between the study population and previous data reported for other Iranian populations and other neighboring countries. The findings of the present study are likely to be useful for Forensic casework analysis and kinship investigations.