Genomic continuity of Argentinean Mennonites

Mennonites are Anabaptist communities that originated in Central Europe about 500 years ago. They initially migrated to different European countries, and in the early 18th century they established their first communities in North America, from where they moved to other American regions. We aimed to analyze an Argentinean Mennonite congregation from a genome-wide perspective by way of investigating >580.000 autosomal SNPs. Several analyses show that Argentinean Mennonites have European ancestry without signatures of admixture with other non-European American populations. Among the worldwide datasets used for population comparison, the CEU, which is the best-subrogated Central European population existing in The 1000 Genome Project, is the dataset showing the closest genome affinity to the Mennonites. When compared to other European population samples, the Mennonites show higher inbreeding coefficient values. Argentinean Mennonites show signatures of genetic continuity with no evidence of admixture with Americans of Native American or sub-Saharan African ancestry. Their genome indicates the existence of an increased endogamy compared to other Europeans most likely mirroring their lifestyle that involve small communities and historical consanguineous marriagesThe research leading to these results has received funding from the People Program (Marie Curie Actions) of the European Union’s Seventh Framework Program FP7/2007–2013/ under REA grant agreement no. 290344; from the “Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación” (SAF2011-26983), the “Plan Galego IDT” (EM 2012/045) and a grant from the “Sistema Universitario Gallego - Modalidad REDES” (2012-PG226) from the Xunta de Galicia (A.S.)S

Genetic admixture patterns in Argentinian Patagonia

As in other Latin American populations, Argentinians are the result of the admixtureamongst different continental groups, mainly from America and Europe, and to a lesserextent from Sub-Saharan Africa. However, it is known that the admixture processes did notoccur homogeneously throughout the country. Therefore, considering the importance foranthropological, medical and forensic researches, this study aimed to investigate the populationgenetic structure of the Argentinian Patagonia, through the analysis of 46 ancestryinformative markers, in 433 individuals from five different localities. Overall, in the Patagoniansample, the average individual ancestry was estimated as 35.8% Native American(95% CI: 32.2?39.4%), 62.1% European (58.5?65.7%) and 2.1% African (1.7?2.4%). Comparingthe five localities studied, statistically significant differences were observed for theNative American and European contributions, but not for the African ancestry. The admixtureresults combined with the genealogical information revealed intra-regional variationsthat are consistent with the different geographic origin of the participants and their ancestors.As expected, a high European ancestry was observed for donors with four grandparentsborn in Europe (96.8%) or in the Central region of Argentina (85%). In contrast, theNative American ancestry increased when the four grandparents were born in the North(71%) or in the South (61.9%) regions of the country, or even in Chile (60.5%). In summary,our results showed that differences on continental ancestry contribution have different originsin each region in Patagonia, and even in each locality, highlighting the importance ofknowing the origin of the participants and their ancestors for the correct interpretation andcontextualization of the genetic information.Fil: Parolin, María Laura. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Centro Nacional Patagónico. Instituto de Diversidad y Evolución Austral; ArgentinaFil: Toscanini, Ulises Faustino. Fundación Favaloro; ArgentinaFil: Velázquez, Irina Florencia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Centro Nacional Patagónico. Instituto de Diversidad y Evolución Austral; ArgentinaFil: Llull, Cintia. Fundación Favaloro; ArgentinaFil: Berardi, Marisa Gabriela. Fundación Favaloro; ArgentinaFil: Holley Reguiló, Juan Alfredo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Centro Nacional Patagónico. Instituto de Diversidad y Evolución Austral; ArgentinaFil: Tamburrini, Camila. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Centro Nacional Patagónico. Instituto de Diversidad y Evolución Austral; ArgentinaFil: Avena, Sergio Alejandro. Universidad Maimónides. Área de Investigaciones Biomédicas y Biotecnológicas. Centro de Estudios Biomédicos, Biotecnológicos, Ambientales y de Diagnóstico; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Filosofía y Letras. Instituto de Ciencias Antropológicas; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Carnese, Francisco Raul. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Filosofía y Letras. Instituto de Ciencias Antropológicas; ArgentinaFil: Lanata, Jose Luis. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte. Instituto de Investigaciones en Diversidad Cultural y Procesos de Cambio. Universidad Nacional de Río Negro. Instituto de Investigaciones en Diversidad Cultural y Procesos de Cambio; ArgentinaFil: Carnero, Noela Sánchez. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Centro Nacional Patagónico. Centro para el Estudio de Sistemas Marinos; ArgentinaFil: Arce, Lucas Federico. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Centro Nacional Patagónico. Instituto de Diversidad y Evolución Austral; ArgentinaFil: Basso, Nestor Guillermo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Centro Nacional Patagónico. Instituto de Diversidad y Evolución Austral; ArgentinaFil: Pereira, Rui. Universidad de Porto; PortugalFil: Gusmão, Leonor. Universidade do Estado de Rio do Janeiro; Brasil. Universidad de Porto; Portuga

Charting the Y-chromosome ancestry of present-day Argentinean Mennonites

Old Order Mennonite communities initially arose in Northern Europe (centered in the Netherlands) and derived from the Anabaptist movement of the 16th century. Mennonites migrated to the New World in the early 18th century, first to North America, and more recently to Mesoamerica and South America. We analyzed Y-chromosome short tandem repeats (STRs) and single nucleotide polymorphisms in males from a community of Mennonites, 'La Nueva Esperanza', which arrived to Argentina in 1985 from colonies in Bolivia and Mexico. Molecular diversity indices coupled with demographic simulations show that Mennonites have a reduced variability when compared with local Argentinean populations and 69 European population samples. Mennonite Y-STR haplotypes were mainly observed in Central Europe. In agreement, multidimensional scaling analyses based on RST genetic distances indicate that Mennonite Y-chromosomes are closely related to Central/Northern Europeans (the Netherlands, Switzerland and Denmark). In addition, statistical inferences made on the most likely geographic origin of Y-chromosome haplotypes point more specifically to the Netherlands as the populations that best represent the majority of the Mennonite Y-chromosomes. Overall, Y-chromosome variation of Mennonites shows the signatures of moderate reduction of variability when compared with source populations, which is in good agreement with their lifestyle in small endogamous demes. These genetic singularities could also help to understand disease conditions that are more prevalent among Mennonites

Investigator® HDplex (Qiagen) reference population database for forensic use in Argentina

Currently, autosomal Short Tandem Repeat (STR) markers represent the method of election in forensic human identification. Commercial kits of most common use nowadays –e.g. PowerPlex®Fusion, Promega Corp.; AmpFlSTR GlobalFiler, Thermofisher scientific; Investigator 24Plex QS,Qiagen-, allow the co-amplification of 23 highly polymorphic STR loci providing a high discrimination power in human identity testing. However, in complex kinship analysis and familial database searches involving distant relationships, additional DNA typing is often required in order to achieve well-founded conclusions. The recently developed kit Investigator® HDplex (Qiagen) co-amplify twelve autosomal STRs markers (D7S1517, D3S1744, D12S391, D2S1360, D6S474, D4S2366, D8S1132, D5S2500, D18S51, D21S2055, D10S2325, SE33), nine of which are not present in the above mentioned kits, providing a set of efficient supplementary markers for human identification purposes. In this study we genotyped a sample of 980 individuals from urban areas of ten Argentinean provinces using the Investigator® HDplex kit, aiming to provide forensic estimates for use in forensic casework and parentage testing in Argentina. We report reference allelic frequency databases for each of the provinces studied as well as for the combined samples. No deviation of Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium was observed. A reasonable discrimination capacity and power of exclusion was estimated which allowed predicting an acceptable forensic behavior of this kit, either to be used as the main STR panel for simple cases or as an auxiliary tool in complex cases. Additionally, population comparison tests showed that the studied samples are relatively homogeneous across the country for these STR set.Fil: Martínez, Gustavo. Poder Judicial de la Provincia de Entre Ríos; ArgentinaFil: Borosky, Alicia. LIDMO; ArgentinaFil: Corach, Daniel. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Farmacia y Bioquímica; ArgentinaFil: Llull, Cintia. Fundación Favaloro; ArgentinaFil: Locarno, Laura. Ministerio Público de la Provincia de Mendoza; ArgentinaFil: Lojo, Maria Mercedes. Poder Judicial de la Provincia de Buenos Aires; ArgentinaFil: Marino, Miguel Eduardo. Ministerio Público de la Provincia de Mendoza; ArgentinaFil: Miozzo, Maria Cecilia. Poder Judicial de Jujuy; ArgentinaFil: Modesti, Nidia Maria. Poder Judicial de Córdoba; ArgentinaFil: Pacharoni, Carla. Poder Judicial de Córdoba; ArgentinaFil: Pilili, Juan Pablo. Poder Judicial de la Provincia de Buenos Aires; ArgentinaFil: Ramella, María Isabel. Poder Judicial de Jujuy; ArgentinaFil: Sala, Adriana Andrea. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Farmacia y Bioquímica; ArgentinaFil: Schaller, Cecilia. Poder Judicial de la Provincia de Entre Ríos; ArgentinaFil: Vullo, Carlos. LIDMO; Argentina. Equipo Argentino de Antropología Forense; ArgentinaFil: Toscanini, Ulises. Fundación Favaloro; Argentin