PLoS ONE (Jan 2013)

Reconstructing Roma history from genome-wide data.

  • Priya Moorjani,
  • Nick Patterson,
  • Po-Ru Loh,
  • Mark Lipson,
  • Péter Kisfali,
  • Bela I Melegh,
  • Michael Bonin,
  • Ludevít Kádaši,
  • Olaf Rieß,
  • Bonnie Berger,
  • David Reich,
  • Béla Melegh

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0058633
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 8, no. 3
p. e58633

Abstract

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The Roma people, living throughout Europe and West Asia, are a diverse population linked by the Romani language and culture. Previous linguistic and genetic studies have suggested that the Roma migrated into Europe from South Asia about 1,000-1,500 years ago. Genetic inferences about Roma history have mostly focused on the Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA. To explore what additional information can be learned from genome-wide data, we analyzed data from six Roma groups that we genotyped at hundreds of thousands of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). We estimate that the Roma harbor about 80% West Eurasian ancestry-derived from a combination of European and South Asian sources-and that the date of admixture of South Asian and European ancestry was about 850 years before present. We provide evidence for Eastern Europe being a major source of European ancestry, and North-west India being a major source of the South Asian ancestry in the Roma. By computing allele sharing as a measure of linkage disequilibrium, we estimate that the migration of Roma out of the Indian subcontinent was accompanied by a severe founder event, which appears to have been followed by a major demographic expansion after the arrival in Europe.