Resumen

CASTRO DE GUERRA, Dinorah; ARROYO, Esteban; SALZANO, Francisco Mauro  y  BORTOLINI, Maria Cátira. Transplanted male genomes in three venezuelan populations. INCI [online]. 2003, vol.28, n.4, pp.197-201. ISSN 0378-1844.

Migration from the Canary Islands to Venezuela has been continuous since Colonial times, some regions of the country presenting an important Canarian influence. Earlier studies demonstrated the maintenance of the original Canarian gene pool in three north-central semi-isolated Venezuelan populations. The present study investigates the origin of the Y-chromosomes in these populations, through the analysis of four biallelic markers and three microsatellite loci located at its nonrecombining region. Haplogroups Q-M3 and E-M2 do not occur in these populations, reflecting the predominantly European origin of their male founders. The combined use of biallelic and microsatellite polymorphisms corroborated this postulation; moreover, the YAP chromosomes detected in two of these Venezuelan populations was associated with allele 13 at the DYS19 locus, which occurs with highest frequencies in Berbers from North Africa, revealing the importance of Berber males in the formation of the Canarian population and/or Berber Y-chromosome introgression during the seven centuries of the Muslim domination of Southern Spain. The predominantly European origin of the Y-chromosome had also been reported for other areas of the Americas, suggesting that the replacement of the aboriginal male background seems to represent a general trend in the process of Conquest and Colonization of the New World. Therefore, and taking into consideration the classification of the American peoples proposed by Darcy Ribeiro, we coined the expression transplanted male genome for the substitution of Native Y-chromosomes in South America

Palabras clave : Venezuelan Population; Y-chromosome; Haplotypes; Haplogroups; Transplanted Male Genomes.