Haplotype analysis of the polymorphic 24 Y-STR markers in six ethnic populations from China

Twenty-four Y-STR loci were analysed in 1446 males from the following six Chinese ethnic populations: Guangxi Han (n=600), Gin (n=161), Maonan (n=135), Miao (n=186), Zhuang (n=226) and Yao (n=138) using the AGCU Y24 STR amplification kit. The lowest estimates of genetic diversity (below 0.5) correspond to markers DYS391 (0.4006), DYS438 (0.4300), and DS388 (0.4907), and the greatest diversity corresponds to markers DYS385a/b (0.9636) and DYS527a/b (0.9439). Moreover, there were 1331 different haplotypes identified from the 1446 total samples, of which 1233 were unique. Notably, we observed shared haplotypes between the four ethnic populations (Maonan, Miao, Zhuang, Yao ethnic population), except between the Guangxi Han and Gin population. The estimated overall haplotype diversity (HD) was 0.9997. A multidimensional scaling (MDS) plot based on the genetic distances between populations demonstrates the genetic similarity of the Maonan, Miao and Zhuang populations with genetic distance below 3.0. No substructure correction is required to estimate the rarity of a haplotype comprising 24 markers. In summary, the results of our study indicate that the 24 Y-STRs have a high level of polymorphism in these six Chinese ethnic populations and could therefore be a powerful tool for forensic applications and population genetic studies.