Abstract
Mitochondrial DNA HV1 sequences and Y chromosome haplotypes (DYS19 STR and YAP) were characterised in an Albanian sample and compared with those of several other Indo-European populations from the European continent. No significant difference was observed between Albanians and most other Europeans, despite the fact that Albanians are clearly different from all other Indo-Europeans linguistically. We observe a general lack of genetic structure among Indo-European populations for both maternal and paternal polymorphisms, as well as low levels of correlation between linguistics and genetics, even though slightly more significant for the Y chromosome than for mtDNA. Altogether, our results show that the linguistic structure of continental Indo-European populations is not reflected in the variability of the mitochondrial and Y chromosome markers. This discrepancy could be due to very recent differentiation of Indo-European populations in Europe and/or substantial amounts of gene flow among these populations.
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Belledi, M., Poloni, E., Casalotti, R. et al. Maternal and paternal lineages in Albania and the genetic structure of Indo-European populations. Eur J Hum Genet 8, 480–486 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.ejhg.5200443
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.ejhg.5200443
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