Substack cometh, and lo it is good. (Pricing)

South Asian Genotype Project, update

Posted on by Razib Khan


I’ve been working on the South Asian Genotype Project. Again, if you are interested: send me a 23andMe, Ancestry, or Family Tree DNA raw genotype file to contactgnxp -at- gmail.com.

In the subject please put:

  1. “South Asian Genotype Project”
  2. The state/province your family is from
  3. Ethnolinguistic group
  4. If applicable, caste

I changed the reference populations because the earlier ones were too complicated. You can see the population averages from public data sets for some groups.  The results for project members are here. I re-ran everyone who has sent data in so far. I’ll leave commentary for later.

At this point, I think the easiest way to update project members is to create a mailing list. If you are have submitted genotypes, please join:

Subscribe to the South Asian Genotype Project

* indicates required




Related Posts:

17 thoughts on “South Asian Genotype Project, update”

  1. I wonder why the Brahui have noticeably higher Iranian component than the Pathans. I know from previous analysis you and Zack ran, that the Baluch are also higher in Iranian than the Pathans but surprising slightly less Iranian than the Brahui.

    From recollection of reading Brown Pundits many years ago and a few online comments from Pakistanis, it is claimed a lot of Brahui have assimilated into the Baluch , and some Baluch have taken on a Brahui identity . Yet that should still not give the Brahui slightly higher Iranian than the Baluch.

    It will be a long time before the oldest Brahui skeletons are tested. I dont know what the average Brahui looks like now, but old photos show some Brahui that look very South Indian or lower caste North Indian.

    The standard Indologist take is that the Brahui are not a relic Dravidian population that somehow persevered in spite of Indo-Iranian regional linguistic dominance.

    Do Academics notice / consider the results of these tests you and Zack have run? What is your confidence level that these Barhui samples you work with are not assimilated Baluch?

    The Tamil component is a proxy for generic Indian / South Asian? What is the Iranian a proxy for?

  2. the names are straightfwd. the iranian samples are persians from western iran (i removed south asian shifted ones, probably from khorasan).

    Do Academics notice / consider the results of these tests you and Zack have run? What is your confidence level that these Barhui samples you work with are not assimilated Baluch?

    i don’t think it’s on their radar. cavalli-sforza was pretty good with sample collection.

    the brahui samples are less cosmopolitan than the baloch. that’s why i used them. and yes, they are more iranian shifted.

    the north-south axis is pakistanis clear. burusho are less iranian, more other west eurasian.

  3. “the brahui samples are less cosmopolitan than the baloch. that’s why i used them. and yes, they are more iranian shifted.”

    Do you know if the Brahui samples were from rural Balochistan while the Baluch was from Baluch living in the big cities, including Sindh?

  5. Here is a recent (2017) paper on the genetic and linguistic situation of the Brahui. Don’t have access to the paper just yet.

    Excerpt from the paper’s abstract:

    “Given the high affinity of Brahui to the other Indo-European Pakistani populations and the absence of population admixture with any of the examined Indian Dravidian groups, we conclude that Brahui are an example of cultural (linguistic) retention following a major population replacement.”

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28381901

  7. Do the lower castes in Pakistan have more Neolithic Iranian? And if so is it limited to Sindh? What about the Iranian in South India, is it more in the Dravidian castes than in South Indian Brahmins?

  9. The Tamil component is from which caste? It make no sense that both Telegu midcaste and a North Kannadi get 90%+ Tamil, Midcaste Telegus have less ASI than North Kannadi or Pulliyar.

    The Iranian component captured Iran-Neolithic, but what % of Iran-Neolithic is captured by Tamil component?
    Add two more pop.references to represent North-Central India and south India, Gujrati midcastes for north-central India and Paniya-Pulayar for ASI shifted South Indians.

  10. Does the Papuan component mean there really is a genetic link between Melanesians and some South Asians; and ancient link?

    Lithuanian = Steppe ancestry? which is also North East Euro component?

    It is striking how the Brahui have lower Lithuanian than Pathans, Punjabi, Gujarati and Sindhi.

  11. Does the Papuan component mean there really is a genetic link between Melanesians and some South Asians; and ancient link?

    i think the most plausible interpretation of this is that many east eurasian groups ‘pick up’ stray % because ASi ancestry in many ppl not perfectly modeled. papuans are part of that ancient family of pops that led to ASI.

    Lithuanian = Steppe ancestry? which is also North East Euro component?

    yes.

  13. “Lol at Punjabi Jatt being Iranian Belo Russian & NW Indian only.”
    Yeah, thats funny. Most of the Jatts i know look nothing like Iranian-Belorussian. Jatts are definitely the most ANI shifted among indic groups, but they are no way more Iranian than Tamil in genetical distance imo.
    The ANI-ASI model is kinda weird without ancient dna.

  14. @Nathan

    See page 7 for longitude and latitude coordinates of the HGDP samples. The Balochi/Brahui samples are from far Northern Balochistan on the Afghanistan border. Southern Afghanistan is home to a large Baloch/Brahui population too.

    https://rosenberglab.stanford.edu/papers/PembertonEtAl2013-G3.pdf

    Exact coordinates are listed here on this supplementary info word doc:

    https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCIQFjAAahUKEwjv1cu_lfrGAhXFWYgKHbn_A1A&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Fejhg%2Fjournal%2Fv19%2Fn1%2Fextref%2Fejhg2010141x1.doc&ei=dYq1Va_HDMWzoQS5_4-ABQ&usg=AFQjCNHXXGG5p5yW5WeU0YK3XiMMA-6kXA&sig2=Htqs0Cg8s0kXHYFQjEEnPw

    For the Brahui, it is (31, 67). The Baloch are listed at (30, 66) and the Makrani at (26, 64). I’ll also note the HGDP Pathan are at (32, 69) and the HGDP Sindhi at (25.5, 69).

  15. For the Brahui, it is (31, 67). This is somewhere Northeast of Chaman, Pakistan. All I can be sure of is, the location is in Qilla Abdullah district. The Baloch in comparison are sampled from somewhere east of Afghanistan’s city of Shorawak (some town west of Quetta). The HGDP Pathan at (32, 69) are from around Wana, Pakistan. Some place slightly west of there since the coordinates are essentially in the Paktika province of Afghanistan.

Comments are closed.