Background: Short tandem repeats (STRs) are important as common genetic markers in forensic identification and population genetics due to their highly polymorphic nature.
Aims: To explore genetic polymorphisms of the Chinese Hunan Han population and further dissect genetic relationships among the Hunan Han and other populations from China.
Subjects and methods: In this study, samples of 394 unrelated healthy individuals from the Chinese Hunan Han population were analysed using 46 autosomal-STRs (A-STRs). Thirteen previously reported populations (6378 individuals) from China were subsequently collected for population genetic analyses based on 23 shared A-STRs.
Results: In the Hunan Han population, a total of 452 alleles were detected in 46 A-STRs with allelic frequencies spanning from 0.0013 to 0.5571. Except for the Penta D locus in linkage disequilibrium, the combined power of discrimination and the combined power of exclusion for 45 A-STRs in the Hunan Han population were 0.999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999510314 and 0.999999999999999726596, respectively. Results of interpopulation differentiation, principal component analysis, and phylogenetic relationship analyses uniformly showed that the Hunan Han have closer genetic affinities with Han populations from different Chinese regions and a geographically close ethnic minority group, namely the Hubei Tujia.
Conclusion: To summarise, these 46 A-STRs showed high polymorphism in the Chinese Hunan Han population for forensic practice.
Keywords: CODIS; Chinese Hunan Han population; Short tandem repeat; forensic genetics; non-CODIS.