Y-chromosome polymorphisms in the United Arab Emirates population

Abstract

Y chromosome short tandem repeats (Y-STR) has been widely used in forensic DNA profiling and lineages analysis. The aim of this study is to establish a database of an extensive Y-STR profiles of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) population and to investigate the distribution of 17 Y-STR loci. Samples of 345 Emirati males using 17 Y-STR loci included in the AmpFLSTR® Y-filer® PCR Amplification kit (Life Technologies) (DYS456, DYS3891, DYS390, DYS389II, DYS458, DYS19, DYS385a/b, DYS393, DYS391, DYS439, DYS635, DYS392, GATA-H4, DYS437, DYS438 and DYS448). Statistical analysis of allele frequency, haplotype diversity and discrimination capacity were performed for the samples using Arlequin software version 3.5A total of 301 unique haplotypes were identified, 271 haplotypes were found to be unique and 22 haplotypes were shared between two individuals. In addition, there were four different haplotypes shared between more than two individuals. The haplotype diversity (HD) was found to be equal to 0.99885. The highest gene diversity was estimated to be 0.94142 for DYS385a/b whereas the lowest was estimated to be 0.4369 for DYS392. The discrimination capacity (DC) was calculated to be 90.03%