Ancestry estimates in afrodescendant population from San Basilio de Palenque, Colombia

Abstract

San Basilio de Palenque is located in Colombia, and was founded by escaped slaves mainly from Cartagena in the sixteenth century. For its history, traditions, ethnicities, culture and language, San Basilio de Palenque has been declared as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO. Insertion/deletion polymorphisms (InDels) have considerable potential in the field of identification and ancestry assessment, since they combine desirable characteristics as genetic markers as simplicity of analysis through PCR and capillary electrophoresis. In the present work a sample from San Basilio de Palenque population (n=187) was characterized using 46 autosomalAIM-indels. A database was built for genotypic and allelic frequencies, and used to assess the genetic ancestry of this peculiar group. As expected for an Afrodescendant population, the most representative ancestry estimate was African with 81.2%, followed by 10.6% European, and 8.2% Native American contributions. The results obtained were compared with previous estimates for a sub region of the Department of Bolivar, called Montes de Maria, which also include San Basilio de Palenque. In the pre-Hispanic era, this region was populated by Zenú indigenous, who mixed with the Spanish settlers. The African ancestry in San Basilio is four times higher than in Bolivar. Interestingly, the second component in San Basilio is European while in Bolivar it is Native American. Our findings can be useful to investigate the genetic structure of Bolivar department and show the importance of considering the heterogeneity that exists when selecting reference populations for forensic applications.