Y-chromosome diversity in the Kalmyks at the ethnical and tribal levels

Abstract

The Mongolic-speaking Kalmyks currently inhabiting the steppes of the Volga region have Central Asian ancestry and are organized into the tribal groups. The genetic relationships among these tribes and their origin have remained obscure. We analyzed 17 short tandem repeat and 44 binary polymorphisms of Y-chromosome in 426 individuals mainly from three major tribes of the Kalmyks (the Torguuds, Dörwöds and Khoshuuds). Among these tribes, the Dörwöds and Torguuds, as well as the Kalmyks collectively as an ethnic group, showed relatively close genetic affinities to each other and to the Mongols and Altaian Kazakhs, whereas the Khoshuuds were clearly separated from all of them, gathering with the Manchu, Tibetans or Evenks (depending on the algorithm used to calculate genetic distances). The genetic results also indicate that paternal gene flow from East Europeans to the Kalmyks is very little, despite their cohabitation in the North Caspian Steppe during the last 380 years. The occurrence of unique cluster of N1c-Tat haplotypes in the Khoshuuds, which dates to about 340 years and is likely to have East European ancestry, is considered as a result of interethnic contacts occurred soon after the appearance of the Kalmyk tribes in the Volga-Ural region.