The genome-wide structure of the Jewish people

Abstract

Contemporary Jews comprise an aggregate of ethno-religious communities whose worldwide members identify with each other through various shared religious, historical and cultural traditions. Historical evidence suggests common origins in the Middle East, followed by migrations leading to the establishment of communities of Jews in Europe, Africa and Asia, in what is termed the Jewish Diaspora. This complex demographic history imposes special challenges in attempting to address the genetic structure of the Jewish people. Although many genetic studies have shed light on Jewish origins and on diseases prevalent among Jewish communities, including studies focusing on uniparentally and biparentally inherited markers, genome-wide patterns of variation across the vast geographic span of Jewish Diaspora communities and their respective neighbours have yet to be addressed. Here we use high-density bead arrays to genotype individuals from 14 Jewish Diaspora communities and compare these patterns of genome-wide diversity with those from 69 Old World non-Jewish populations, of which 25 have not previously been reported. These samples were carefully chosen to provide comprehensive comparisons between Jewish and non-Jewish populations in the Diaspora, as well as with non-Jewish populations from the Middle East and north Africa. Principal component and structure-like analyses identify previously unrecognized genetic substructure within the Middle East. Most Jewish samples form a remarkably tight subcluster that overlies Druze and Cypriot samples but not samples from other Levantine populations or paired Diaspora host populations. In contrast, Ethiopian Jews (Beta Israel) and Indian Jews (Bene Israel and Cochini) cluster with neighbouring autochthonous populations in Ethiopia and western India, respectively, despite a clear paternal link between the Bene Israel and the Levant. These results cast light on the variegated genetic architecture of the Middle East, and trace the origins of most Jewish Diaspora communities to the Levant.

Genome-wide scan with nearly 700 000 SNPs in two Sardinian sub-populations suggests some regions as candidate targets for positive selection

“…The study exploited information from a data set of 689 879 autosomal SNPs that have been genotyped in 310 Sardinian individuals with the Affymetrix Genome-Wide Human SNP 6.0 Array, as well as from a subset of 114 702 SNPs shared between our experiment and publicly available data sets for several European, North-African and Near-Eastern populations. 1,34 According to the first PC identified in the PCA performed at the single-village level, a clear differentiation between Ogliastra and other samples exists, whereas the other PCs mainly highlight an internal differentiation within Ogliastra; on the contrary, samples from Southern Sardinia appear quite homogeneous. Admixture analysis perfectly confirms these findings, allowing the observation of evident patterns of internal differentiation for the Ogliastra sample.…”

The phylogenetic and geographic structure of Y-chromosome haplogroup R1a

“…We assembled a genotyping panel of 16 244 males from 126 Eurasian populations, some of which we report upon for the first time herein and others that we have combined from earlier studies, 22,[29][30][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45] and updated to a higher level of phylogenetic resolution. All samples were obtained using locally approved informed consent and were de-identified.…”

Echoes from Sepharad: signatures on the maternal gene pool of crypto-Jewish descendants

“…[18][19][20][21][22][23] However, only a few reports have been published on Sephardic and crypto-Jewish descendants. [24][25][26][27][28][29][30] Recent analysis of paternal lineages in Iberia points to a high proportion of Jewish ancestry.…”