Dissecting the within-Africa ancestry of populations of African descent in the Americas.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The ancestry of African-descended Americans is known to be drawn from three distinct populations: African, European, and Native American. While many studies consider this continental admixture, few account for the genetically distinct sources of ancestry within Africa--the continent with the highest genetic variation. Here, we dissect the within-Africa genetic ancestry of various populations of the Americas self-identified as having primarily African ancestry using uniparentally inherited mitochondrial DNA.

Methods and principal findings

We first confirmed that our results obtained using uniparentally-derived group admixture estimates are correlated with the average autosomal-derived individual admixture estimates (hence are relevant to genomic ancestry) by assess

SUBMITTER: Stefflova K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3017210 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature