Although molecular genetic evidence continues to accumulate that is consistent with a recent common African ancestry of modern humans, its ability to illuminate regional histories remains incomplete. A set of unique event polymorphisms associated with the non-recombining portion of the Y-chromosome (NRY) addresses this issue by providing evidence concerning successful migrations originating from Africa, which can be interpreted as subsequent colonizations, differentiations and migrations overlaid upon previous population ranges. A total of 205 markers identified by denaturing high performance liquid chromatography (DHPLC), together with 13 taken from the literature, were used to construct a parsimonious genealogy. Ancestral allelic states were deduced from orthologous great ape sequences. A total of 131 unique haplotypes were defined which trace the microevolutionary trajectory of global modern human genetic diversification. The genealogy provides a detailed phylogeographic portrait of contemporary global population structure that is emblematic of human origins, divergence and population history that is consistent with climatic, paleoanthropological and other genetic knowledge.

Apolipoprotein E (APOE = gene, apoE = protein) plays a central role in plasma lipoprotein metabolism and in lipid transport within tissues. The APOE shows a genetic polymorphism determined by three common alleles, APOE*2, APOE*3, APOE*4 and the product of the three alleles differs in several functional properties. APOE is involved in the development of certain pathological conditions. In particular, the APOE*4 allele is a risk factor for susceptibility to coronary artery disease (CAD) and Alzheimer's Disease (AD). In the present study we analyzed the APOE allele distribution in the world. The APOE*3 is the most frequent in all the human groups, especially in populations with a long-established agricultural economy like those of the Mediterranean basin (0.849–0.898). The frequency of APOE*4, the ancestral allele, remains higher in populations like Pygmies (0.407) and Khoi San (0.370), aborigines of Malaysia (0.240) and Australia (0.260), Papuans (0.368), some Native Americans (0.280), and Lapps (0.310) where an economy of foraging still exists, or food supply is (or was until the recent past) scarce and sporadically available. The APOE*2 frequency fluctuates with no apparent trend (0.145–0.02) and is absent in Native Americans. We suggest that the APOE*4, based on some functional properties it has and on its distribution among human populations, could be identified as a ‘thrifty’ allele. The exposure of APOE*4 to the contemporary environmental conditions (Western diet, longer lifespans) could have rendered it a susceptibility allele for CAD and AD. The absence of the association of APOE*4 with CAD and AD in Sub-Saharan Africans, and its presence in African Americans, seems to confirm this hypothesis.

For most of the past century, prehistorians have had to rely on the fossil and archaeological records in order to reconstruct the past. In the last few decades, this evidence has been substantially supplemented from classical human genetics. More recently, phylogenetic analyses of DNA sequences that incorporate geographical information have provided a high-resolution tool for the investigation of prehistoric demographic events, such as founder effects and population expansions. These events can be dated using a molecular clock when the mutation rate and founder haplotypes are known. We have previously applied such methods to sequence data from the mitochondrial DNA control region, to suggest that most extant mitochondrial sequences in western Europe have a local ancestry in the Early Upper Palaeolithic, with a smaller proportion arriving from the Near East in the Neolithic. Here, we describe a cladistic notation for mitochondrial variation and expand upon our earlier analysis to present a more detailed portrait of the European mitochondrial record.

The nature of polymorphism and molecular sequence variation in the genes of the human major histocompatibility complex (MHC) provides strong support for the idea that these genes are under selection. With the understanding that selection shapes MHC variation new questions have become the focus of study. What is the mode of selection that accounts for MHC polymorphism? Is variation maintained by pathogen pressure or by reproductive mechanisms? Discerning between these requires drawing on information from studies on association between HLA genes and infectious diseases, reproductive success and mating preferences relative to HLA genotypes, and theoretical studies that compare the outcomes of different selection regimes. The pattern that has emerged suggests that several types of selection are plausible for the maintenance of HLA polymorphism.

We describe a novel method for analysis of marker genotype data from admixed populations, based on a hybrid of Bayesian and frequentist approaches in which the posterior distribution is generated by Markov chain simulation and score tests are obtained from the missing-data likelihood. We analysed data on unrelated individuals from eight African-American populations, genotyped at ten marker loci of which two (FY and AT3) are linked (22 cM apart). Linkage between these two loci was detected by testing for association of ancestry conditional on parental admixture. The strength of this association was consistent with European gene flow into the African-American population between five and nine generations ago. To mimic the mapping of an unknown gene in an ‘affecteds- only’ analysis, a binary trait was constructed from the genotype at the AT3 locus and a score test was shown to detect linkage of this ‘trait’ with the FY locus. Mis-specification of the ancestry-specific allele frequencies – the probabilities of each allelic state given the ancestry of the allele – was detected at three of the ten marker loci. The methods described here have wide application to the analysis of data from admixed populations, allowing the effects of linkage and population structure (variation of admixture between individuals) to be distinguished. With more markers and a more complex statistical model, genes underlying ethnic differences in disease risk could be mapped by this approach.

We have developed a method for meta-analysis of genome scans which allows systematic integration of data from published results. The Genome Search Meta-analysis method (GSMA) uses a non-parametric ranking method to identify genetic regions that show consistently increased sharing statistics or lod scores. The GSMA ranks genetic regions according to the lod score or p-value achieved in each scan. The summed rank across studies is compared to its probability distribution assuming ranks are randomly assigned. The GSMA can confirm evidence for regions highlighted in the original genome scans, and identify novel regions, which did not reach significance in any scan. In this paper, the GSMA was applied to four genome screens in multiple sclerosis and across 11 screens from autoimmune disorders. The GSMA is appropriate for studies with different family ascertainment, markers, and statistical analysis methods. The method increases the power to detect individual linkages in a clinically homogeneous dataset and has the potential to detect susceptibility loci in clinically distinct diseases which show involvement of common pathogenetic pathways.

Genetic studies have emphasized the contrast between North African and sub-Saharan populations, but the particular affinities of the North African mtDNA pool to that of Europe, the Near East, and sub-Saharan Africa have not previously been investigated. We have analysed 268 mtDNA control-region sequences from various Northwest African populations including several Senegalese groups and compared these with the mtDNA database. We have identified a few mitochondrial motifs that are geographically specific and likely predate the distribution and diversification of modern language families in North and West Africa. A certain mtDNA motif (16172C, 16219G), previously found in Algerian Berbers at high frequency, is apparently omnipresent in Northwest Africa and may reflect regional continuity of more than 20 000 years. The majority of the maternal ancestors of the Berbers must have come from Europe and the Near East since the Neolithic. The Mauritanians and West-Saharans, in contrast, bear substantial though not dominant mtDNA affinity with sub-Saharans.

Two hundred and eleven patients with a clinical diagnosis of Turner syndrome were studied. We report (i) the cytogenetic results, (ii) the frequency of cryptic mosaicism and (iii) the parental age and the parental origin of the abnormality. We scored 100 cells from blood cultures and found 97 patients to have a 45,X constitution, 15 to be 45,X/46,XX or 45,X/47,XXX mosaics, 86 to have a structurally abnormal X and 13 to have a structurally abnormal Y chromosome. Molecular methods were used to look for cryptic X and Y chromosome mosaicism in patients with a 45,X constitution. Two cryptic X but no cryptic Y mosaics were detected. In 74% of the 45,X patients the X was maternal in origin. The i(Xq)s were approximately equally likely to involve the paternal or maternal chromosome, while the majority of deletions and rings and virtually all the abnormal Y chromosomes were paternal in origin. We suggest that the preponderance of paternal errors in Turner syndrome may result from the absence of pairing along the greater part of the XY bivalent during paternal mei I, which may make the sex chromosomes particularly susceptible to both structural and non-disjunctional errors during male gametogenesis.

The ABO blood group is the most important blood group system in transfusion medicine. Since the ABO gene was cloned and the molecular basis of the three major alleles delineated about 10 years ago, the gene has increasingly been examined by a variety of DNA-based genotyping methods and analysed in detail by DNA sequencing. A few coherent observations emerge from these studies. First, there is extensive sequence heterogeneity underlying the major ABO alleles that produce normal blood groups A, B, AB and O when in correct combination with other alleles. Second, there is also extensive heterogeneity underlying the molecular basis of various alleles producing ABO subgroups such as A2, Ax and B3. There are over 70 ABO alleles reported to date and these alleles highlight the extensive sequence variation in the coding region of the gene. A unifying system of nomenclature is proposed to name these alleles. Third, extensive sequence variation is also found in the non-coding region of the gene, including variation in minisatellite repeats in the 5′ untranslated region (UTR), 21 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in intron 6 and one SNP in the 3′ UTR. The haplotypes of these variations reveal a specific relationship with the major ABO alleles. Fourth, excluding the common alleles, about half of the remaining alleles are due to new mutations and the other half can better be explained by intragenic recombination (both crossover and gene conversion) between common alleles. In particular, the recombination sites in hybrid alleles can be quite precisely defined through haplotype analysis of the SNPs in intron 6. This indicates that recombination is equally as important as point mutations in generating the genetic diversity of the ABO locus. Finally, a large number of ABO genotyping methods are available and are based on restriction analysis, allele specific amplification, mutation screening techniques or their combinations.

Mutations in the translated part of the leptin gene (LEP) have been found in only two families. Nevertheless DNA polymorphisms in the LEP region are linked to extreme obesity. We previously found in the 5′ region of LEP a polymorphism, G-2548A, associated with a difference in BMI reduction following a low calorie diet in overweight women. Recently, this polymorphism was associated with extreme obesity in women. In this work, we genotyped a new sample from the general population including 314 normal weight (BMI < 27 kg/m2) and 109 overweight subjects (BMI [ges ] 27 kg/m2). The genotype and allele frequencies were significantly different between groups, with the G-2548 allele being more frequent in the overweight subjects (p < 0.01). In men, carriers of this allele had lower leptin concentrations adjusted for fat mass (p = 0.05). Our results indicate that variations at the leptin locus are associated with common obesity phenotypes, and not only with extreme obesity or the rare mendelian obesity syndromes.

The transmission disequilibrium test (TDT) is a simple means to detect association which should only be positive if the marker allele is linked to the disease locus, but it cannot be used if parents of affected subjects are unavailable, as can occur when the disease has a late age of onset. Although one can sometimes deduce parental genotypes using the siblings of affected cases, reliance on this procedure can introduce bias and may also result in discarding many families which could provide useful information. Instead, it is shown that the use of unaffected siblings as controls is, like the TDT, robust against bias due to population stratification and other sources, and is expected only to produce positive results when a marker is both associated and linked with the disease locus. The method can have much less power than a case-control study using unrelated controls, but this can be guarded against by seeking unaffected siblings which are genotypically distinct from cases and by focusing only on alleles which are different within pairs of cases and controls. This yields a pair-wise test for association which can be used for multiallelic markers in a manner exactly analogous to the extended TDT (ETDT). The use of siblings as controls is simple, robust, practical and worthy of further consideration.

Few mutations have been found in the human leptin gene and the relationship between leptin gene sequence variation and human overweight is uncertain. To determine whether sequence variation within the leptin gene and its regulatory elements contribute to extreme obesity, we screened ∼3 kb of the 5′ flanking region and the three exons in 125 unrelated extremely obese (BMI [ges ] 40 kg/m2) and 86 average weight women (BMI < 27 kg/m2). Within the protein coding regions only one heterozygous silent mutation was found (codon 102; AAC/AAT). Within the 5′ flanking region, six frequent sequence variants were detected (q > 0.10), and the allele frequencies of three of these variants differed between obese and average weight Caucasian women (+19, χ2 = 4.46, p = 0.035; −1823, χ2 = 4.36, p = 0.037; −2548, χ2 = 5.73, p = 0.017). Nine infrequent sequence variants were detected (q < 0.05) but they did not occur more often among obese women compared with those of average-weight. For extremely obese women, three polymorphisms (+19, −188, and −633) predicted the degree of obesity. Allelic variants may influence the regulation of the leptin gene and thereby influence body weight, particularly among extremely obese women. However, given the low variability in coding regions and the high variability in the 5′ flanking region, discerning the functional significance of each variant is likely to be difficult.

Long PCR followed by nested PCR has previously been used to determine CYP2A6 160H alleles, but the method proved unreliable. We have optimized this approach in a DNA bank of 1032 subjects (age range 59–74 years) to give reliable results, yielding indirect molecular evidence and very strong statistical evidence of hitherto unrecognized common alleles (designated O) recalcitrant to the long PCR. Coding three alleles (160L, 160H and O) and an approach to association analysis originally developed to deal with null alleles implicit in ABO blood group phenotyping, the contribution of 160H (functionally null) to reduced smoking habit has been clearly measured for the first time, unconfounded by alleles null to the long PCR. The most significant findings (p < 0.01) are that the possession of a 160H allele, compared with not possessing a 160H allele, is associated with a mean age of starting regular smoking 3 years later (95% CI±1.93 years, average start age 20–21 years rather than 17–18 years); and that the average likelihood of quitting smoking at any time is 1.75 fold (95% CI. 1.17–2.61) for those possessing an 160H allele compared with those who have no 160H allele. This suggests that a smoking subject with a genotype predicted to confer 50% of the ability to eliminate nicotine via the CYP2A6 pathway has almost twice the likelihood of quitting smoking.

An efficient test of deviation from Hardy–Weinberg frequencies with one degree of freedom was applied to 44 marker loci in a genome scan, and 7 loci had a significant excess of apparent homozygotes (χ2(1) > 6) suggestive of typing error. In this example evidence for linkage did not increase when outliers were censored. Statistical quality control is an essential part of genotyping, and the effect of mistyping and map error should be considered in evaluating any genome scan.

Expressions are derived for the sample size required to achieve a given power in variance component linkage analysis of a quantitative trait in unascertained samples. For simplicity an additive model, comprising effects due to a single QTL, residual additive genetic factors, and individual-specific random environmental variation, is considered. Equations are given relating sample size to trait heritability for sibpairs, sib trios, nuclear families having two and three sibs, and arbitrary relative pairs. The effects of nonzero residual additive genetic variance and parental information are discussed, and a scale relationship for sample sizes with sibships and nuclear families is derived. For larger sampling structures such as extended pedigrees the inheritance space is randomly sampled and the relevant equations are solved numerically. Comparative power curves are presented for sibships of size 2–4 and for an extended pedigree of 48 individuals. Simulation results for sibpairs confirm the validity of the theoretical results.

Although the Canary Islands were settled by humans, possibly of Berber origin, as late as 2500 years ago, the precise course and numbers of early migrations to the archipelago remain controversial. We have therefore analysed mtDNA variation (HVS-I as well as selected RFLP sites) in 300 individuals from the seven Canary Islands. The distribution and variation across the islands in a specific mtDNA clade of Northwest African ancestry suggest that there was one dominant initial settlement process that affected all the islands, from east to west. This indicates that a certain genetic affinity of present-day Canary Islanders to Northwest African Berbers mainly stems from the autochthonous population rather than slaves captured on the neighbouring African coast. The slave trade after the European conquest left measurable, though minor, traces in the mtDNA pool of the Canary Islands, which in its majority testifies to the European immigration.

The analysis of the hypervariable regions I and II of mitochondrial DNA in Portugal showed that this Iberian population presents a higher level of diversity than some neighbouring populations. The classification of the different sequences into haplogroups revealed the presence of all the most important European haplogroups, including those that expanded through Europe in the Palaeolithic, and those whose expansion has occurred during the Neolithic. Additionally a rather distinct African influence was detected in this Portuguese survey, as signalled by the distributions of haplogroups U6 and L, present at higher frequencies than those usually reported in Iberian populations. The geographical distributions of both haplogroups were quite different, with U6 being restricted to North Portugal whereas L was widespread all over the country. This seems to point to different population movements as the main contributors for the two haplogroup introductions. We hypothesise that the recent Black African slave trade could have been the mediator of most of the L sequence inputs, while the population movement associated with the Muslim rule of Iberia has predominantly introduced U6 lineages.

Clues regarding candidate genes which influence susceptibility to spina bifida and anencephaly come from the identification of folate-associated risk factors and from studies of mouse mutants showing neural tube anomalies. On this basis we selected five candidate genes; CBS, MS, MTHFR, T (Brachyury) and BRCA1 for genetic analysis in 31 Dutch and 48 British NTD families. Ten polymorphisms, two for each gene, were used in transmission tests for disequilibrium (TDT). In six instances more than 50 transmissions from heterozygous parents could be examined. Using TDT we find evidence for an association between an allele at the T gene and liability to NTD in the embryo. Data from British and Dutch populations showed the same trend and in combination gave a χ2TDT=4.89, P=0.03 (OR 2.39, CI 95% 1.02–5.61). No association, in either population group, was found for CBS, MS and MTHFR, the enzymes most directly associated with the known risk factors in folate metabolism. The possibility of complex genetic interactions was explored; the data show that a Gly919 MS variant occurs more frequently in combination with the MTHFR thermolabile variant in mothers of NTD offspring (OR 3.94, CI 95% 1.0–16.3).

In order to assess the effect of the HLA region on familiality of coeliac disease (CD), we carried out a study on 121 CD index cases and 325 first degree relatives. The transmission disequilibrium test confirmed the importance of the HLA-DR3 haplotype in CD susceptibility. However, the different distortion found in affected children inheriting maternal or paternal DR3 alleles suggested that the sex of the parent might influence the risk conferred by this haplotype. The increase in risk to siblings of affected individuals relative to the risk in the general population (λs) and the contribution of the HLA genes to this clustering (λsHLA) have also been estimated. Non-overlapping data from the literature have been collected and combined with our sample to extend such analysis. Then, the percentage contribution of the HLA region to the development of CD among siblings was 36·2%. This result confirms that the HLA genotypes are an important genetic background to CD development but shows that additional susceptibility factors remain to be identified.

A number of localizations for the putative susceptibility gene(s) have been identified for both Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. In a genome wide scan, Hugot et al. (1996) identified a region on chromosome 16 which appeared to be responsible for the inheritance of inflammatory bowel disease in a small proportion of families. Subsequent work has suggested that this localization is important for susceptibility to Crohn's disease rather than ulcerative colitis (Ohmen et al. 1996; Parkes et al. 1996). We investigated the contribution of this localization to the inheritance of inflammatory bowel disease in 54 multiplex Australian families, and confirmed its importance in a significant proportion of Crohn's disease families; we further refined the localization to a region near to D16S409, obtaining a maximum LOD score of 6.3 between D16S409 and D16S753.