Y-chromosome lineages from Portugal, Madeira and Açores record elements of sephardim and berber ancestry

• Autor(a) principal: Gonçalves, Rita
• Data de Publicação: 2005
• Outros Autores: Freitas, Ana, Branco, Marta, Rosa, Alexandra, Fernandes, Ana T., Zhivotovsky, Lev A., Underhill, Peter A., Kivisild, Toomas, Brehm, António
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.13/3018
• topic: Portuguese; Y-chromosome; SNP; STR; Sephardim; Berber; Portugal; Madeira (Portugal); Azores (Portugal); .; Faculdade de Ciências da Vida

A total of 553 Y-chromosomes were analyzed from mainland Portugal and the North Atlantic Archipelagos of Ac¸ores and Madeira, in order to characterize the genetic composition of their male gene pool. A large majority (78–83% of each population) of the male lineages could be classified as belonging to three basic Y chromosomal haplogroups, R1b, J, and E3b. While R1b, accounting for more than half of the lineages in any of the Portuguese subpopulations, is a characteristic marker of many different West European populations, haplogroups J and E3b consist of lineages that are typical of the circum-Mediterranean region or even East Africa. The highly diverse haplogroup E3b in Portuguese likely combines sub-clades of distinct origins. The present composition of the Y chromosomes in Portugal in this haplogroup likely reflects a pre-Arab component shared with North African populations or testifies, at least in part, to the influence of Sephardic Jews. In contrast to the marginally low sub-Saharan African Y chromosome component in Portuguese, such lineages have been detected at a moderately high frequency in our previous survey of mtDNA from the same samples, indicating the presence of sex-related gene flow, most likely mediated by the Atlantic slave trade.