Journal article
Traces of sub-saharan and middle eastern lineages in Indian muslim populations
M Eaaswarkhanth, I Haque, Z Ravesh, IG Romero, PR Meganathan, B Dubey, FA Khan, G Chaubey, T Kivisild, C Tyler-Smith, L Singh, K Thangaraj
European Journal of Human Genetics | NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP | Published : 2010
Abstract
Islam is the second most practiced religion in India, next to Hinduism. It is still unclear whether the spread of Islam in India has been only a cultural transformation or is associated with detectable levels of gene flow. To estimate the contribution of West Asian and Arabian admixture to Indian Muslims, we assessed genetic variation in mtDNA, Y-chromosomal and LCT/MCM6 markers in 472, 431 and 476 samples, respectively, representing six Muslim communities from different geographical regions of India. We found that most of the Indian Muslim populations received their major genetic input from geographically close non-Muslim populations. However, low levels of likely sub-Saharan African, Arabi..
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Awarded by UK-India Education and Research Initiative
Funding Acknowledgements
We are grateful to all the donors for providing blood samples. We thank Giorgio Bertorelle for his useful advice on the Admixture analysis, Qasim Ayub for comments, AG Reddy for technical support and Mustafa Fakruddin Viramgamwala for help during sample collection. ME, PRM and BD thank the Directorate of Forensic Science, Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India for the fellowship. TK and KT were supported by the UKIERI Grant RG47772. CTS was supported by the Wellcome Trust.