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Dissecting the genetic history of the Roman Catholic populations of West Coast India

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Abstract

Migration and admixture history of populations have always been curious and an interesting theme. The West Coast of India harbours a rich diversity, bestowing various ethno-linguistic groups, with many of them having well-documented history of migrations. The Roman Catholic is one such distinct group, whose origin was much debated. While some historians and anthropologists relating them to ancient group of Gaud Saraswat Brahmins, others relating them for being members of the Jews Lost Tribes in the first Century migration to India. Historical records suggests that this community was later forcibly converted to Christianity by the Portuguese in Goa during the Sixteenth Century. Till date, no genetic study was done on this group to infer their origin and genetic affinity. Hence, we analysed 110 Roman Catholics from three different locations of West Coast of India including Goa, Kumta and Mangalore using both uniparental and autosomal markers to understand their genetic history. We found that the Roman Catholics have close affinity with the Indo-European linguistic groups, particularly Brahmins. Additionally, we detected genetic signal of Jews in the linkage disequilibrium-based admixture analysis, which was absent in other Indo–European populations, who are inhabited in the same geographical regions. Haplotype-based analysis suggests that the Roman Catholics consist of South Asian-specific ancestry and showed high drift. Ancestry-specific historical population size estimation points to a possible bottleneck around the time of Goan inquisition (fifteenth century). Analysis of the Roman Catholics data along with ancient DNA data of Neolithic and bronze age revealed that the Roman Catholics fits well in a basic model of ancient ancestral composition, typical of most of the Indo-European caste groups of India. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis suggests that most of the Roman Catholics have aboriginal Indian maternal genetic ancestry; while the Y chromosomal DNA analysis indicates high frequency of R1a lineage, which is predominant in groups with higher ancestral North Indian (ANI) component. Therefore, we conclude that the Roman Catholics of Goa, Kumta and Mangalore regions are the remnants of very early lineages of Brahmin community of India, having Indo-Europeans genetic affinity along with cryptic Jewish admixture, which needs to be explored further.

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Availability of data and material

Data have been uploaded in the CCMB server http://tdb.ccmb.res.in/bic/database_pagelink.php?page=wcdata and would be made available for the researchers upon request to the corresponding authors.

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Acknowledgements

We thank all the study participants, who volunteered in this study. LK acknowledge the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) for the Fellowship. NR thank the Director, Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences, and was supported by In-house project-9.3 of BSIP, Lucknow. K.T was supported by the JC Bose Fellowship, SERB, DST and CSIR, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India.

Funding

This study is funded by Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Uppal Road, Hyderabad, Telangana, 500007, India

    Lomous Kumar, Satya Prakash & Kumarasamy Thangaraj

  2. Canadian Institute for Jewish Research, Montreal, Canada

    Kranti Farias

  3. Institute of Advanced Materials, IAAM, Gammalkilsvägen 18, 590 53, Ulrika, Sweden

    Anshuman Mishra

  4. Department of Applied Zoology, Mangalore University, Mangalore, 574199, India

    Mohammed S. Mustak

  5. Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences, Uttar Pradesh, 53 University Road, Lucknow, 226007, India

    Niraj Rai

  6. DBT-Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, Uppal, Hyderabad, 500007, India

    Kumarasamy Thangaraj

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  1. Lomous Kumar
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  2. Kranti Farias
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  3. Satya Prakash
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  4. Anshuman Mishra
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  7. Kumarasamy Thangaraj
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Correspondence to Niraj Rai or Kumarasamy Thangaraj.

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The study was approved by Institute Ethical Committee of CSIR-CCMB, Hyderabad, India.

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Kumar, L., Farias, K., Prakash, S. et al. Dissecting the genetic history of the Roman Catholic populations of West Coast India. Hum Genet 140, 1487–1498 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00439-021-02346-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00439-021-02346-4

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