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Document Type

Article

Abstract

Political boundaries and locations of European peoples have been drastically altered by two world wars. Obtaining sufficient genetic information for interpreting European gene frequencies in terms of ethno-historical and linguistic data becomes a difficult task when data have not been available for certain countries. Some of these problems can be circumvented if immigrants to the U.S. or their descendants are used as representatives of pre-World War I Europeans. Sera from 1,975 European immigrants and their descendants were collected from donors whose response to questionnaires indicated that their four grandparents originated from the same geopolitical unit. The sera were tested for Glm(f, z, a, and x), G3m(b0, 1, 3, 5, c3,5, g, s, and t), A2m (1 and 2) and Km(l). The haplotype frequencies observed for immigrants to the United States were not significantly different from data published on indigenous Europeans. This is the first report of uncommon Gm haplotypes in many of the populations studied. The present study analyzes the distribution of infrequent haplotypes in central and eastern Europe. Some of these haplotypes are found in high frequency in Asiatic populations (Gmf,a:b, Gmz,a:b's,t and Gmz,a:b), suggesting that their presence is due to Asian admixture rather than recombination or mutation. Asian admixture was estimated to be highest in eastern and central Europe and lowest in northern and western Europe. Finally, the results document a genetic basis for the long standing practice of using U.S. populations to represent indigenous European populations for genetic studies when the European populations are not available for study.

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