Abstract
Mitochondrial DNA polymorphism was analysed in a sample of 108 Croatians from the Adriatic Island isolate of Hvar. Besides typically European varieties of human maternal lineages, haplogroup F was found in a considerable frequency (8.3%). This haplogroup is most frequent in southeast Asia but has not been reported before in Europe. The genealogical analysis of haplogroup F cases from Hvar suggested founder effect. Subsequent field work was undertaken to sample and analyse 336 persons from three neighbouring islands (Brac, Korcula and Krk) and 379 more persons from all Croatian mainland counties and to determine if haplogroup F is present in the general population. Only one more case was found in one of the mainland cities, with no known ancestors from Hvar Island. The first published phylogenetic analysis of haplogroup F worldwide is presented, applying the median network method, suggesting several scenarios how this maternal lineage may have been added to the Croatian mtDNA pool.
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Acknowledgements
We are indebted to the Croatian people, in particular inhabitants of the island of Hvar, for their co-operation in performing this study. We thank Ille Hilpus and Jaan Lind for technical assistance. This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology grant no. 01960101 to P Rudan, Estonian Science Foundation grant to R Villems, and the British Council (ALIS), Croatian Ministry of Science (ALIS) and the Wellcome Trust (IRDA) grants to H Campbell and I Rudan. I Rudan was supported by the British Scholarship Trust Fellowship, British Medical Research Council Fellowship and the Scholarship of the University of Edinburgh.
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Tolk, HV., Barac, L., Pericic, M. et al. The evidence of mtDNA haplogroup F in a European population and its ethnohistoric implications. Eur J Hum Genet 9, 717–723 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.ejhg.5200709
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.ejhg.5200709
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