DNAprint Genomics (DNAG)

[mingwan0]

Admixture in Brazil

http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_abstract&pid=S0103-40142004000100004&lng=en&n...

PENA, Sérgio D.J. and BORTOLINI, Maria Cátira. Pode a genética definir quem deve se beneficiar das cotas universitárias e demais ações afirmativas?. Estud. av., 2004, vol.18, no.50, p.31-50. ISSN 0103-4014.

IN THIS ARTICLE we used tools of molecular and population genetics to estimate quantitatively the African contribution for the formation of the Brazilian population. We examined two genomic compartments: mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), maternally inherited, and nuclear DNA, inherited from both parents. The studies using mtDNA showed that about 30% of Brazilians self-classified as White and 80% of Brazilian Negroes carry maternal lineages typical of Sub-Saharan Africa. Using these data we could estimate that at least 89 million Brazilians are afrodescendants, a number considerably larger than the 76 million individuals self-classified as Negro in the 2000 census. The analyses on nuclear polymorphisms employed "ancestry informative" markers and showed even more striking results. On the basis of studies in individuals self-classified as White from several Brazilian regions, we estimated that approximately 146 million Brazilians (86% of the population) had more than 10% African contribution to their genome. These numbers should be taken into account in discussing affirmative action programs in Brazil, but in a descriptive rather than a prescriptive sense.