Gene Diversity Analysis and Microdifferentiation Process in North Indian Muslim Populations

Indian population is well known for its genetic diversity, ethnicity and microdifferentiation process. The present work deals with the distribution of A1A2BO, Rh (D), PTC tasting ability and Red green Colorblindness to study the genetic structure, fitness and microdifferentiation process among different Muslim populations of North India. We have undertaken a survey of the gene frequencies of the four markers in six endogamous groups: Syed, Sheikh, Pathan, Ansari, Qureshi and Saifi. For A1A2BO only, the Syed and Ansari showed significant differences while other combinations showed nonsignificant values. All the populations showed nonsignificant differences for the PTC marker except Pathans of which interpopulational differences were seen. Pooled heterozygosity was highest for A1A2BO being 0.6899 and lowest for Colorblindness, 0.0727. The average of the DST and GST values for the four markers were found to be 0.00698 and 0.0176, respectively. A dendrogram was constructed using the UPGMA and NJ clustering method. It shows that Syed and Sheikh are the more recent populations, followed by Pathan, then Ansari and the oldest ones are Qureshi. The results of the genetic distance analysis can throw some light on origin, migration and genetic relationship among different endogamous groups of Muslim Populations.