Portuguese crypto-Jews: The genetic heritage of a complex history

The first documents mentioning Jewish people in Iberia are from the Visigothic period. It was also in this period that the first documented anti-Judaic persecution took place. Other episodes of persecution would happen again and again during the long troubled history of the Jewish people in Iberia and culminated with the Decrees of Expulsion and the establishment of the Inquisition: some Jews converted to Catholicism while others resisted and were forcedly baptized, becoming the first Iberian Crypto-Jews. In the 18th century the official discrimination and persecution carried out by the Inquisition ended and several Jewish communities emerged in Portugal. From a populational genetics point of view, the worldwide Diaspora of contemporary Jewish communities has been intensely studied. Nevertheless, very little information is available concerning Sephardic and Iberian Crypto-Jewish descendants. Data from the Iberian Peninsula, the original geographic source of Sephardic Jews, is limited to two populations in Portugal, Belmonte, and Bragança district, and the Chueta community from Mallorca. Belmonte was the first Jewish community studied for uniparental markers. The construction of a reference model for the history of the Portuguese Jewish communities, in which the genetic and classical historical data interplay dynamically, is still ongoing. Recently an enlarged sample covering a wide region in the Northeast Portugal was undertaken, allowing the genetic profiling of male and female lineages. A Jewish specific shared female lineage (HV0b) was detected between the community of Belmonte and Bragança. In contrast to what was previously described as a hallmark of the Portuguese Jews, an unexpectedly high polymorphism of lineages was found in Bragança, showing a surprising resistance to the erosion of genetic diversity typical of small-sized isolate populations, as well as signs of admixture with the Portuguese host population

Simple and highly discriminatory microsatellite-based multiplex PCR for Aspergillus fumigatus strain typing

AbstractThe answers to important questions concerning Aspergillus fumigatus pathogenicity, transmissions routes and efficacy of treatments require highly discriminating and reproducible genotyping methods. The present study was aimed at improving microsatellite methodology for A. fumigatus typing by reducing the task of strain identification to a single multiplex reaction and by selecting highly accurate short tandem repeat polymorphisms. A set of eight primer pairs was used for the genotype determination of 116 clinical isolates of A. fumigatus obtained from three healthcare centres. A new, automated and highly discriminatory typing method is described for A. fumigatus strains. The optimized multiplex PCR was successfully performed with all tested clinical strains and showed a discriminatory power of 0.9997 among presumably unrelated isolates. The comparison of groups of strains from different health centres showed that 99.6% of the genotypic variation was present within groups. Strains with the same genotype were isolated from the same patient, sometimes recovered more than 1 year later. A few cases of patients at the same clinic unit carrying strains of identical genotype strongly suggested colonization by A. fumigatus during their hospitalization. Specific measures must therefore be taken in order to prevent and restrict such incidents

Pattern of mtDNA Variation in Three Populations from São Tomé e Príncipe

We have analysed the matrilineal genetic composition of three self-reported ethnic groups from São Tomé e Príncipe (Gulf of Guinea), an African archipelago whose settlement begun in the late fifteenth century. Sequence data from the hypervariable segments I (HVS-I) and II (HVS-II) were obtained for 30 Angolares, 35 Forros and 38 Tongas. The repertory of mtDNA lineages in São Tomé e Príncipe denoted a fully African maternal pool, primarily arisen from a Central/Southwestern substratum. The absence of any lineages of putative European descent means that the European impact at the mitochondrial pool was virtually nil. Angolares showed a clear reduction of mtDNA diversity and a slight genetic differentiation relative to Tongas or Forros, whereas the latter two groups did not present any signs of genetic boundaries between each other. The data obtained here reinforce the depiction of genetic substructuring in São Tomé e Príncipe previously derived from Y-chromosome STRs. In addition, the crossing of mtDNA and Y-STR information led to the inference that the female mediated gene flow within the archipelago was less restricted than the male, a pattern that could be framed in the cultural traditions and socio-historical interactions among the groups

Genes from the TAS1R and TAS2R families of taste receptors: Looking for signatures of their adaptive role in human evolution

Taste perception is crucial in monitoring food intake and, hence, is thought to play a significant role in human evolution. To gain insights into possible adaptive signatures in genes encoding bitter, sweet, and umami taste receptors, we surveyed the available sequence variation data from the 1000 Genomes Project Phase 3 for TAS1R (TAS1R1-3) and TAS2R (TAS2R16 and TAS2R38) families. Our study demonstrated that genes from these two families have experienced contrasting evolutionary histories: While TAS1R1 and TAS1R3 showed worldwide evidence of positive selection, probably correlated with improved umami and sweet perception, the patterns of variation displayed by TAS2R16 and TAS2R38 were more consistent with scenarios of balancing selection that possibly conferred a heterozygous advantage associated with better capacity to perceive a wide range of bitter compounds. In TAS2R16, such adaptive events appear to have occurred restrictively in mainland Africa, whereas the strongest evidence in TAS2R38 was detected in Europe. Despite plausible associations between taste perception and the TAS1R and TAS2R selective signatures, we cannot discount other biological mechanisms as driving the evolutionary trajectories of those TAS1R and TAS2R members, especially given recent findings of taste receptors behaving as the products of pleiotropic genes involved in many functions outside the gustatory system.IPATIMUP is included in the i3S Consortium, which is partially supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT). This work is also funded by FEDER funds through the Operational Programme Competitiveness Factors (COMPETE) and National Funds through the FCT (projects PEst-C/SAU/LA0003/2013 and POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007274, fellowships SFRH/BD/63343/2009 to C.V., SFRH/ BPD/65000/2009 to L.A., and SFRH/BPD/120777/2016 to P.I.M.), and by Programa Operacional Regional do Norte (Norte 2020), through FEDER funds under the Quadro de Referência Estratégico Nacional (QREN; NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000029). We thank Jacquelyn Beals for the careful editing of the work. We also thank Sònia Casillas for the helpful instructions about the tracks from the PopHuman browser, and Miguel Arenas and Eduardo Conde Sousa for the aid in extracting data from those tracks

Analysis of paternal lineages in Brazilian and African populations

The present-day Brazilian population is a consequence of the admixture of various peoples of very different origins, namely, Amerindians, Europeans and Africans. The proportion of each genetic contribution is known to be very heterogeneous throughout the country. The aim of the present study was to compare the male lineages present in two distinct Brazilian populations, as well as to evaluate the African contribution to their male genetic substrate. Thus, two Brazilian population samples from Manaus (State of Amazon) and Ribeirão Preto (State of São Paulo) and three African samples from Guinea Bissau, Angola and Mozambique were typed for a set of nine Y chromosome specific STRs. The data were compared with those from African, Amerindian and European populations. By using Y-STR haplotype information, low genetic distances were found between the Manaus and Ribeirão Preto populations, as well as between these and others from Iberia. Likewise, no significant distances were observed between any of the African samples from Angola, Mozambique and Guinea Bissau. Highly significant Rst values were found between both Brazilian samples and all the African and Amerindian populations. The absence of a significant Sub-Saharan African male component resulting from the slave trade, and the low frequency in Amerindian ancestry Y-lineages in the Manaus and Ribeirão Preto population samples are in accordance with the accentuated gender asymmetry in admixture processes that has been systematically reported in colonial South American populations

Searching for the roots of the first free African American community

San Basilio de Palenque is an Afro-descendant community near Cartagena, Colombia, founded in the sixteenth century. The recognition of the historical and cultural importance of Palenque has promoted several studies, namely concerning the African roots of its first inhabitants. To deepen the knowledge of the origin and diversity of the Palenque parental lineages, we analysed a sample of 81 individuals for the entire mtDNA Control Region as well as 92 individuals for 27 Y-STRs and 95 for 51 Y-SNPs. The results confirmed the strong isolation of the Palenque, with some degree of influx of Native American maternal lineages, and a European admixture exclusively mediated by men. Due to the high genetic drift observed, a pairwise FST analysis with available data on African populations proved to be inadequate for determining population affinities. In contrast, when a phylogenetic approach was used, it was possible to infer the phylogeographic origin of some lineages in Palenque. Contradicting previous studies indicating a single African origin, our results evidence parental genetic contributions from widely different African regions.We thank all sample donors for their contribution to this work and all the people who helped with sample collection, namely, Regina Miranda from the Community of San Basilio de Palenque, the personnel of the Benkos Biojó Rural school, and Miguel Obeso from the etnoeducación program. This work was supported by the University of Cartagena and FPIT—Fundación para la promoción de la investigación y la tecnología del Banco de la República, Colombia (FPIT-388) and partially financed by FEDER—Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional funds through the COMPETE 2020—Operacional Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalization (POCI), Portugal 2020, and by Portuguese funds through FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia/Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação in the framework of the projects “Institute for Research and Innovation in Health Sciences” (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007274). FS was supported by Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro—FAPERJ (E-26/202.275/2019). LG was supported by Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico—CNPq (ref. 306342/2019-7), and Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro—FAPERJ (CNE-2018). VG was supported by FCT, under the program contract provided in Decree-Law no.57/2016 of August 29. The IPATIMUP integrates the i3S research unit, which is partially supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology

Etnocultivo do jambu para abastecimento da cidade de Belém, estado do Pará.

O jambu que faz parte da gastronomia cultural dos paraenses como componente do pato-notucupi e tacacá vem sofrendo grandes transformações com relação a sua utilização. É cultivado por produtores periurbanos em pequenas áreas, em conjunto com outras hortaliças, sobretudo para atender o consumo da cidade de Belém e dos principais núcleos urbanos da mesorregião do Nordeste Paraense. Foi efetuado um levantamento histórico da utilização do jambu, das mudanças com relação e seu emprego na culinária, para indústria de cosméticos e fármacos e nas práticas usadas pelos agricultores periurbanos dos municípios de Ananindeua, Benevides, Santa Izabel do Pará e Santo Antônio de Tauá. A urbanização e a especulação de terras nas áreas próximas de Belém, o surgimento de polos de produção em outros estados e países, o processo de patenteamento para novos produtos no exterior e uso na gastronomia nacional e internacional estão transformando o jambu em uma nova hortaliça dos trópicos