Author(s)

Doris E. G.-Camargo^1*, Rafael Camacho-Mejorado^2*, Claudio Gómez-Alegría³, Angelo Alario⁴, Esther A. H.-Tobías², Gustavo Mora- García¹, Marco A. M.-Ríos⁵, Rocío Gómez^2*

¹Doctorado en Medicina Tropical, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Cartagena, Cartagena de Indias, Colombia.
²Departamento de Toxicología, Cinvestav-IPN, México D.F., México.
³Departamento de Farmacia, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá, Colombia.
⁴Departamento Médico, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Cartagena, Cartagena de Indias, Colombia.
⁵Departamento de Biomedicina Molecular, Cinvestav-IPN, México D.F., México.

Ethnicity has been associated with the incidence of diseases and consequently it is a cornerstone in medical genetic studies. It is mainly important in admixture populations, where the population stratification can produce spurious results that lead to erroneous conclusions. Consequently, population stratification has become one of the most important confounding factors in population-based genetic association studies, especially in Latino populations. Cartagena de Indias is a cosmopolitan city with dissimilar ancestry proportions due to recent miscegenation. This population mainly exhibits African and Amerindian matrilineal ancestries. Nevertheless, important asymmetries in the paternal genetic history related to the complex patterns of migration in the colonial period increase the male genetic diversity in this population. As a result of this recent admixture, population stratification has arisen, where each subpopulation is not equally represented. Consequently, the allele differences between cases and controls could be related with different frequencies among different population strata rather than the association of the genes with the disease. In order to define the patrilineal substructure of the Cartagena’s population, a total of 130 unrelated men were ancestrally studied using 15 Y-STR loci routinely employed in anthropological, forensic and population genetics. Our results show that Cartagena is an admixture population consisting of European (80%), Amerindian (10%) and African ancestries (10%), which are represented by haplogroups R1b and I2a (xI2a1), Q-M242/Q-M3, and E1b1a/E1b1b, respectively. Complex genetic patterns found in Cartagena’s population emphasize the importance to know the genetic variation in order to diminish the inconsistence for future genetic association studies. In addition, our findings illustrate the complex genetic background of Cartagena population and reinforce the need to encompass more geographic regions to generate more robust data for anthropological and forensic applications.

Population Genetics, Y-Chromosome, Microsatellites, Cartagena, Colombia

G.-Camargo, D. , Camacho-Mejorado, R. , Gómez-Alegría, C. , Alario, A. , H.-Tobías, E. , García, G. , M.-Ríos, M. and Gómez, R. (2015) Genetic Structure of Cartagena de Indias Population Using Hypervariable Markers of Y Chromosome. Open Journal of Genetics, 5, 27-41. doi: 10.4236/ojgen.2015.51003.