Conference publications

Abstracts

XIX conference

Influence of population dynamics on the genetic distance between populations

Nurieva N.I., Borinskaya S.A.², Medvinsky A.B.

Pushchino State Institute of Natural Sciences, Russia, 142290, Moscow Region, Pushchino, Science Avenue, 3, E-mail: nailya.nurieva@mail.ru

¹Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Biophysics, Russia, 142290, Moscow Region, Pushchino, Institutskaya str., 3,

²Vavilov Institute of General Genetics, Russia, 142290, Moscow, Gubkina str., 3,

1 pp. (accepted)

Genetic polymorphism is widely used in science for dating evolution and historical events. Because of absence of recombination, genetic markers of the Y-chromosome play an important role in the anthropogenesis research [1]. Y-Chromosome Phylogenetic Tree is based on point mutations. Because of the microsatellite variability, which is accumulated inside a haplogroup, we can evaluate age of the haplogroup, or time of the most recent common ancestor (TMRCA). Also, there are methods based on the short tandem repeats allowing estimation of the population divergence time.

Oscillation of the population abundance leads to random fluctuations of allele frequencies, i.e. genetic drift. The genetic drift makes considerable contribution to the genetic distance between populations.

Here we consider genetic drift influence on the genetic distances ASD and (δμ)² between two model populations. We calculate genetic distances taking into account Y-STR polymorphism.

We show that the genetic distance (δμ)² grows non-linearly. As a result it can not be used in dating population events. When the population abundance is small, the ASD distance also grows non-linearly because of the strong drift influence in spite of constancy of the population abundance. Oscillations of the population abundance, both regular and chaotic, lead to decrease of the genetic distance ASD resulting in underestimate of the divergence time. More detailed research of population dynamics influence on the genetic structure of population is necessary to provide more correct dating of evolution events with the use of Y-STR markers.

Literature.

1. Zhivotovsky L.A. Microsatellite variability in human populations and methods of its research // Vestnik VOGiS Volume 10, № 1, 2006. PP. 74-95 (in Russian).

• view as PDF (in Russian) (PDF)