Genetic study of African populations: polymorphisms of the plasma proteins TF, PL, F13B, and AHSG in populations of Namibia and Mozambique.

Genetic variations of four highly polymorphic serum proteins, TF, PI, F13B, and AHSG, were tested to distinguish one black African and one Khoisan population of southwest Africa. The results show that indeed the systems TF, PI, and AHSG are of high value for anthropological genetics: The allele frequencies for these systems enable clear identification of and distinction between black African and Khoisan populations. The F13B locus, on the other hand, reveals for both the black African and the Khoisan populations specific and unique African variants: a high frequency of F13B*2 and the lowest frequency of F13B*3 so far worldwide. The new data are compared with results for TF and PI in another black African population of Mozambique, which Rodewald et al. (1988) had studied previously. The dendrogram, based on genetic distance data D and average linkage cluster analysis, shows minimal distance between both black African populations of Namibia and Mozambique and marked distance between those and the Khoisan population of Namibia.

Microevolution and genetic affinities among six Amerindian tribes of lower Central America: comparative genetic study of serum proteins.

We evaluate the pattern of genetic variation among native Mesoamerican Amerindians by the construction of a gene frequency map that reflects the past action of evolutionary forces. The analysis is based on the theory that genes of modern human populations carry the encoded history even of humans' remote past and their early wanderings around the globe. We examined the serum proteins TF, PI, F13B and AHSG on 491 samples of 6 Mesoamerican Amerindian tribes (Guaymi, Bribri, Cabecar, Teribe, Guatuso, and Huetar) and 2 tribal mixed samples (Teribe x Guaymi and Bribri x Cabecar). We find a distinct genetic pattern in the examined tribes that clearly separates the Mesoamerican Amerindians from other living Amerindian groups. The proteins, TF, PI, and AHSG proved to be especially rich in special genetically fixed variants and polymorphisms, and F13B proved to be a powerful genetic marker to distinguish human groups. Using Nei's distance D and Mahalanobis's D2, we compared the polymorphisms and allele frequencies at the four serum protein loci to discern degrees of similarity between the samples. These data are presented in the dendrograms computed by average linkage cluster analyses and in two kinds of unrooted phylogenetic trees, neighbor-joining trees and split decompositions. Estimations are made on Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium and on genetic diversity and average heterozygosity index.