1. ¹Department of Biological Sciences, Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA
2. ²N. I. Vavilov Institute of General Genetics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
3. ³Department of Genetics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

Correspondence: Dr RJ Herrera, Department of Biological Sciences, Florida International University, University Park, OE 304, Miami, FL 33199 USA. Tel: +1 305 348 1258; Fax: +1 305 348 1259; E-mail: herrerar@fiu.edu

Received 20 February 2007; Revised 30 August 2007; Accepted 11 September 2007; Published online 10 October 2007.

Abstract

Arabia has served as a strategic crossroads for human disseminations, providing a natural connection between the distant populations of China and India in the east to the western civilizations along the Mediterranean. To explore this region's critical role in the migratory episodes leaving Africa to Eurasia and back, high-resolution Y-chromosome analysis of males from the United Arab Emirates (164), Qatar (72) and Yemen (62) was performed. The role of the Levant in the Neolithic dispersal of the E3b1-M35 sublineages is supported by the data, and the distribution and STR-based analyses of J1-M267 representatives points to their spread from the north, most likely during the Neolithic. With the exception of Yemen, southern Arabia, South Iran and South Pakistan display high diversity in their Y-haplogroup substructure possibly a result of gene flow along the coastal crescent-shaped corridor of the Gulf of Oman facilitating human dispersals. Elevated rates of consanguinity may have had an impact in Yemen and Qatar, which experience significant heterozygote deficiencies at various hypervariable autosomal STR loci.