Genetic variation of the Yuan in Saraburi Province of central Thailand revealed by autosomal forensic STRs

Abstract

The Yuan in Saraburi province, central Thailand, were forcibly migrated due to political circumstances from northern Thailand around 1800 A.D. They have since been settled in Saraburi. Previous genetic studies of this population solely employed uniparentally inherited markers. The present study reports the genetic diversity of Saraburi Yuan based on 15 forensic autosomal short tandem repeats (D8S1179, D21S11, D7S820, CSF1PO, D3S1358, THO1, D13S317, D16S539, vWA, TPOX, D18S51, D5S818, FGA, D19S433 and D2S1338). Allelic frequencies of all studied STR loci did not deviate from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, even after applying the Bonferroni correction. The Saraburi Yuan exhibited a relatively high degree of genetic diversity compared to other ethnic groups, mirrored in the number of observed alleles (121), genotype diversity (0.784±0.397), and average heterozygosity (0.800). The Saraburi Yuan are more closely related to the Tai than the Mon-Khmer speaking populations, reflecting the genetic homogeneity among the Tai as previously reported. The similarity of the genetic components found in the Saraburi Yuan and other northern Thai groups suggests that they belong to the same gene pool and possibly share common ancestors.