No abstract

Lesotho is a landlocked country with approximately 2.2 million inhabitants. Over 97% of the population is represented by the Southern Sotho people (Sotho-Tswana group), followed by a number of minorities mostly from the Nguni language group. In this study we investigated the patterns of genetic variation and report genetic diversity, forensic parameters and novel allele variations in 938 unrelated Bantu males. Population pairwise comparisons identified high affinities between the Xhosa and the Vundle, while the largest genetic distance was observed between the Vundle and the Baphuthi ethnic groups (R st = 0.14878). A high level of genetic differentiation between populations was observed considering culture and language affiliations as opposed to geographic distance.

The allelic ladder component of genotyping systems is of utmost importance for accurate allele designation and sizing precision quality assurances by capillary electrophoresis. The production process for ladders also demands adherence to specific technical criteria in order to pass as a reliable profiling system. The conventional methodology for ladder production includes allele isolation by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis purification followed by amplification of each allele isolate using the polymerase chain reaction. Alternatively, the allele cloning approach has long been promoted as being less labor intensive, higher throughput, and more suitable for long‐term storage of the allele isolates. In this study, we present a workflow to produce a short tandem repeat allelic ladder using a cloning approach. We identified the key factors that may impact the quality of the ladder and provide recommendations to resolve these challenges. In this study, 143 alleles from 10 Y‐chromosome short tandem repeat loci were cloned and amplified individually from plasmid extracts. Amplicons were assessed using quality assurance criteria for selection of polymerase chain reaction products and dilution factors to produce, first, a balanced ladder for each locus, and then a final ladder compiled from each individual locus ladder. The final product was suitable for forensic applications.

Using contemporary people as proxies for ancient communities is a contentious but necessary practice in anthropology. In Southern Africa, the distinction between the Cape KhoeSan and eastern KhoeSan remains unclear as ethnicity labels are continually changed through time and most communities were extirpated. The eastern KhoeSan may reflect an "essentialistic" biological distinction from neighbouring Bantu-speaking communities or it may not be tied to "race" and instead denote communities with a nomadic "life-way" distinct from agro-pastoralism. The BaPhuthi of the 1800s in the Maloti-Drakensberg, Southern Africa had a substantial San constituency and a life-way of nomadism, cattle raiding, and horticulture. The BaPhuthi heritage could provide insights into the history of the eastern KhoeSan. We examine for the first time genetic affinities of 23 BaPhuthi to distinguish if KhoeSan ancestry reflects biologically distinct heritage or a shared life-way. Data were merged with 52 global populations. The Principle Component Analysis, ADMIXTURE clustering and F3 tests show no support for a unique eastern KhoeSan ancestry distinct from other KhoeSan or southern Bantu-speaking communities. The BaPhuthi have strong affinities with Nguni communities, as the non-Nguni show strong evidence of recent African admixture possibly related to late-iron age migrations. The BaPhuthi may have an interesting connection to the early iron-age Bantu-speaking communities as MALDER detected no signals for late-iron age admixture. We demonstrate how the "essentialistic" understanding of references in historic literature creates misconstrued notions of ethnic/biological distinctions when "San" and "Bushman" may have reflected ambiguous references to the non-sedentary polities and practices.

No abstract