Objectives: This investigation was performed to identify and evaluate the distribution of all 15 Y-chromosome lineages belonging to the Q clade in a sample of natives from South America.
Methods: One hundred and forty-eight individuals from 20 Native American populations, as well as 24 Asian samples including Eskimos, were tested with 18 biallelic loci that can identify all currently known lineages of the Y-Chromosome Q clade. Sequencing was performed in part of the sample (∼180,000 nucleotides, which detected, for instance, several downstream markers related to the Q1a3a lineage).
Results: No new mutation was found and Q1a3a was consistently found in high frequencies in all populations, followed at a much lower frequency by Q1a3*, while Q1a3a derived-lineages are probably population/tribe/region-specific.
Conclusion: The number of basal Y chromosome lineages in North America is apparently higher than in South America due probably to a bottleneck during the South American colonization and/or more recent Circum-Arctic gene flow.
Copyright © 2011 Wiley-Liss, Inc.