Insights From Y-STRs: Forensic Characteristics, Genetic Affinities, and Linguistic Classifications of Guangdong Hakka and She Groups.

Chunfang Luo,Fenfen Wang,Lizhong Duan,Yifeng Zhao,Haoliang Fan,Pingming Qiu,Dehua Peng,Qiqian Xie,Muhammad Jawad,Yanning Li,Zhengming Du,Shao-Qing Wen,Lingxiang Wang,Kai Ru,Shahid Nazir

doi:10.3389/fgene.2021.676917

Abstract

Guangdong province is situated in the south of China with a population size of 113.46 million. Hakka is officially recognized as a branch of Han Chinese, and She is the official minority group in mainland China. There are approximately 25 million Hakka people who mainly live in the East and North regions of China, while there are only 0.7 million She people. The genetic characterization and forensic parameters of these two groups are poorly defined (She) or still need to be explored (Hakka). In this study, we have genotyped 475 unrelated Guangdong males (260 Hakka and 215 She) with Promega PowerPlex® Y23 System. A total of 176 and 155 different alleles were observed across all 23 Y-STRs for Guangdong Hakka (with a range of allele frequencies from 0.0038 to 0.7423) and Guangdong She (0.0047–0.8605), respectively. The gene diversity ranged from 0.4877 to 0.9671 (Guangdong Hakka) and 0.3277–0.9526 (Guangdong She), while the haplotype diversities were 0.9994 and 0.9939 for Guangdong Hakka and Guangdong She, with discrimination capacity values of 0.8885 and 0.5674, respectively. With reference to geographical and linguistic scales, the phylogenetic analyses showed us that Guangdong Hakka has a close relationship with Southern Han, and the genetic pool of Guangdong Hakka was influenced by surrounding Han populations. The predominant haplogroups of the Guangdong She group were O2-M122 and O2a2a1a2-M7, while Guangdong She clustered with other Tibeto-Burman language-speaking populations (Guizhou Tujia and Hunan Tujia), which shows us that the Guangdong She group is one of the branches of Tibeto-Burman populations and the Huonie dialect of She languages may be a branch of Tibeto-Burman language families.

Highlights

Hakka is one of the far-reaching ethnic groups that have a worldwide distribution and is officially recognized as a branch of Han Chinese in China
The allele frequencies, allele numbers, and Gene diversity (GD) values of 23 Y-chromosome short tandem repeats (Y-STRs) loci in the Guangdong Hakka and She groups are presented in Supplementary Tables 1, 2, respectively
The GD values of six Y-STRs were greater than 0.9, and the highest (0.9671) and lowest (0.4877) estimates of GD corresponded to loci DYS385a/b and DYS438, respectively

Summary

Introduction

Hakka is one of the far-reaching ethnic groups that have a worldwide distribution and is officially recognized as a branch of Han Chinese in China. The Hakka population is mainly settled in the eastern and northern regions of Guangdong, comprising Meizhou, Heyuan, Huizhou, Shaoguan, and Qingyuan (Figure 1). There are two views about the origin of the Hakka population, either they belong to Northern Han (Luo, 1989) or they belong to Southern Han (Fang, 2007). According to a previous study (Li et al, 2003), majority of the Fujian Hakka gene pool (80.2%) came from Northern Han based on 14 Y-SNPs. On the other hand, the frequency of a 9-bp deletion in mitochondrial region V is 21.74% in Meizhou Hakka, which indicated that Meizhou Hakka had close relationships with Fujian Hakka (∼0.197) and other populations from South China (Cai et al, 2015). Guangdong province is home to the Hakka population, but there is no comprehensive study available on the Y-chromosomal prospect of Guangdong Hakka

Methods

Results

Conclusion