A genome-wide genetic signature of Jewish ancestry perfectly separates individuals with and without full Jewish ancestry in a large random sample of European Americans

Anna C Need,David B Goldstein,Dalia Kasperavičiūtė,Elizabeth T Cirulli

doi:10.1186/gb-2009-10-1-r7

Abstract

A principal components analysis of genomic information showed that individuals with full Jewish ancestry formed a clearly distinct cluster from those individuals with no Jewish ancestry.

Highlights

It was recently shown that the genetic distinction between self-identified Ashkenazi Jewish and non-Jewish individuals is a prominent component of genome-wide patterns of genetic variation in European Americans
Our first test was to assess how accurately individuals with full Jewish ancestry could be distinguished from those with no Jewish ancestry using the score on the first principal component axis (PC1)
We found that the individuals with full Jewish ancestry formed a clearly distinct cluster from those individuals with no Jewish ancestry (Figure 1)

Summary

Introduction

It was recently shown that the genetic distinction between self-identified Ashkenazi Jewish and non-Jewish individuals is a prominent component of genome-wide patterns of genetic variation in European Americans. No study has yet assessed how accurately self-identified (Ashkenazi) Jewish ancestry can be inferred from genomic information, nor whether the degree of Jewish ancestry can be inferred among individuals with fewer than four Jewish grandparents. Many genetic and non-genetic lines of evidence make clear that there are differences amongst the Jewish and non-Jewish peoples of Europe. Price et al [7] showed that selfdescribed Jewish ancestry was a major determinant of population genetic structure in European populations, but they did not address the question of whether genetic data might be able to accurately identify which individuals do and do not have Jewish ancestry. A further 62 provided European or Russian country-of-origin information for at least one grandparent and 14 were able to give no more information than 'European-American'

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Discussion

Conclusion