Y chromosome diversity among the Iranian religious groups: A reservoir of genetic variation

Abstract

Background: Iran is ethnically, linguistically and religiously diverse. However, little is known about the population genetics of Iranian religious communities.

Aim: This study was performed in order to define the different paternal components of the Iranian gene pool.

Subjects and methods: Fourteen Y chromosome bi-allelic markers were analysed in 130 male subjects from Assyrian, Armenian and Zoroastrian groups in comparison with 208 male subjects from three Iranian Muslim groups.

Results: Among the three Iranian Muslim groups, the Uromian people possessed a particularly close genetic relationship to the Armenian, whereas the Zoroastrian group was different from the Uromian, but had a close genetic relationship to the two other Muslim groups (Kermanian and Shirazian). The genetic results indicate a relationship between Armenian and Assyrian groups in Iran and a clear distinction of the former from the Zoroastrian group. However, Assyrians had elevated frequency (40%) of R*(xR1a) and low frequency (11%) of J.

Conclusion: The results of this study may suggest that the Assyrian population either experienced Eurasian gene flow (possibly from Armenia) or that enforced relocations and expulsion of conquered people with different origin led to the integration of descendants with R haplogroup. This could also be due to genetic drift due to small population size and endogamy resulting from religious barriers.

Keywords::

• Y chromosome
• Iran
• Assyrian
• Armenian
• Zoroastrian

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to all the donors for providing blood samples and to the Assyrian, Armenian and Zoroastrian societies for their valuable collaboration in collecting the cases. In particular, we would like to thank Dr Mehran Shahravan and Dr Esmaiel Sanei Moghadam for arranging sampling from Zoroastrians and Muslims in Kerman. We wish to thank the personnel and students, of lab 322 in School of Life Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India.

Declaration of interest: We are thankful to the ‘National Institute for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology’, Tehran, Iran, and the ‘National Research Institute for Science policy’, Tehran, Iran, for their financial support. The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.