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Genetic structure of the population of Cabo Verde (West Africa): Evidence of substantial european admixture
Author(s) -
Parra E. J.,
Ribeiro J. C. Teixeira,
Caeiro J. L. B.,
Riveiro A.
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
american journal of physical anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.146
H-Index - 119
eISSN - 1096-8644
pISSN - 0002-9483
DOI - 10.1002/ajpa.1330970405
Subject(s) - cape verde , archipelago , population , geography , gene pool , demography , allele frequency , biology , allele , genetics , ethnology , genetic diversity , gene , archaeology , history , sociology
The population of Cabo Verde was founded in the fifteenth century (1462), on the basis of slaves brought from the West African coast and a few Europeans, mainly from Portugal. The polymorphism of six red cell enzymes (ADA, AK1, ALAD, ESD, GLO1, and PGD) and ten plasma proteins (AHSG, BF, F13A, F13B, GC, HP, ORM, PLG, TBG, and TF) was studied in a sample of 268 individuals from Cabo Verde (West Africa). There is no statistical evidence of genetic heterogeneity between the two groups of islands which constitute the archipelago, Barlavento and Sotavento. The gene frequency distribution observed in Cabo Verde differs, in many markers, from that of West African populations, suggesting an important European influence. The proportion of Caucasian genes in the population of Cabo Verde has been calculated to be M = 0.3634 ± 0.0510, and the considerable dispersion of the locus‐specific admixture estimates seems to indicate random drift has also played a role in the evolution of the allele frequencies in the archipelago. Partition of the variance of the mean estimate in evolutionary and sampling variance shows the evolutionary variance is more than ten times higher than the sampling variance. When dendrograms are constructed on the basis of different genetic distances, the population of Cabo Verde clusters with Afro‐Americans, forming a different group from the populations of the African continent. This is interpreted as a consequence of the importance of Caucasian admixture both in Afro‐Americans and in the population of Cabo Verde. © 1995 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.