Detection of novel interspersed repeat regions to differentiate among human populations in/near Japan and development of a method to estimate the populations

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 25670342
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Legal medicine
• Research Institution: Nagoya University
• Principal Investigator: Yamamoto Toshimichi 名古屋大学, 医学(系)研究科(研究院), 准教授 (50260592)
• Co-Investigator(Renkei-kenkyūsha): SAITOU Naruya 国立遺伝学研究所, 集団遺伝学系, 教授 (30192587)
• Project Period (FY): 2013-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: 法医学 / 人類学 / 遺伝的異質性 / 反復配列 / 分散型 / Alu配列 / 縦列型 / STR

Outline of Final Research Achievements

In the present study, younger Alu Y family was focused on among some kind of interspersed Alu elements which have very high mutation rates to differentiate between genetically very close populations such as Japanese and Koreans. A transposon display method as the first step to detect novel interspersed repeat regions to differentiate among human populations in/near Japan and development was completed.
Alternatively, using more than 100 loci for short tandem repeats (STRs), a kind of tandem repeats, 2D dots for individuals by a factorial correspondence analysis revealed that Japanese and Korean populations could be categorized into two groups. When we calculated Bayes factors for these individuals based on Dirichlet multi-nominal distribution. Summary of those factors for two populations, showed about 92% of Japanese were strongly suggested as Japanese. More number of data for each population could be necessary to differentiate between both populations more accurately.

Free Research Field

法医学