Background: Previous studies of the genetic polymorphism of the Y-chromosome of Kazakhs were focussed on the Eastern, Central, Southern, and Western regions of Kazakhstan. In addition, many of these studies were limited to 17 Y-STR loci from the Yfiler.
Aim: To enrich the existing Kazakhstan Y-chromosome Haplotype Reference Database from the Northern Kazakh population data by a wide set of 27 Y-STR and investigate the population genetic relationships with previously published data.
Subjects and methods: Twenty-seven Y-STR loci from the Yfiler Plus PCR Amplification Kit were analysed in 382 healthy unrelated Kazakh males from Northern Kazakhstan. Genetic polymorphism was analysed using Arlequin software.
Results: A total of 326 distinct haplotypes of the 27 Y-STR loci were observed in 382 individuals. The discrimination capacity (0.9982) and haplotype diversity (0.8534) were computed. A total of 168 alleles at single-copy loci were observed and their frequencies ranged from 0.003-0.843. The pairwise genetic distance (RST) showed that the Northern Kazakh population is genetically distinct from the Chinese Kazakh population.
Conclusions: Genetic polymorphism shows that the potential value of 27 Y-STR loci for forensic casework in the Northern Kazakh population and the current findings might be beneficial for paternal lineages in the study of population genetics.
Keywords: Haplotype diversity; Kazakh population; Y-chromosomal STR; YHRD; Yfiler Plus.