The Irish Travellers, an itinerant, socially isolated group in Ireland, are probably descended from a small group of Irish founders, rather than from the more widespread European Roma population, who have a similar lifestyle.
John Relethford of the State University of New York College at Oneonta and Michael Crawford at the University of Kansas in Lawrence compared genes from 119 of the Travellers with those of Irish, Roma, English, Hungarian and Indian populations. On the basis of population variations in 12 of the genes, the authors report that the Travellers, who make up less than 0.2% of the Irish population, are genetically more similar to Irish people than to the other groups.
The researchers went on to do a genetic comparison between the Travellers and residents of four Irish provinces. They found that although the Travellers were still distinct genetically, the differences could be accounted for by the effect of random genetic variations in the historically small group, according to a mathematical model.
Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.22191 (2012)
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Nomadic group of Irish descent. Nature 492, 10 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/492010a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/492010a
