A 30-InDel Assay for Genetic Variation and Population Structure Analysis of Chinese Tujia Group

In the present study, thirty autosomal insertion and deletion polymorphic loci were simultaneously amplified and genotyped in a multiplex system, and their allelic frequencies as well as several forensic parameters were obtained in a sample of 236 unrelated healthy Tujia individuals. All the loci were in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium after applying a Bonferroni correction and all pair-wise loci showed no significant linkage disequilibrium. These loci were observed to be relatively informative and discriminating, quite efficient for forensic applications. Allelic frequencies of 30 loci were compared between the Tujia group and other reference populations, and the results of analysis of molecular variance indicated the Tujia group showed the least significant differences with the Shanghai Han at one locus, and the most with Central Spanish population at 22 loci. We analyzed the population genetic structure by the principal component analysis, the clustering of STRUCTURE program and a Neighbor-Joining tree, and then evaluated the genetic relationships among Tujia and other 15 populations.