Abstract
The northern region of the Indian subcontinent is a vast landscape interlaced by diverse ecologies, for example, the Gangetic Plain and the Himalayas. A great number of ethnic groups are found there, displaying a multitude of languages and cultures. The Tharu is one of the largest and most linguistically diverse of such groups, scattered across the Tarai region of Nepal and bordering Indian states. Their origins are uncertain. Hypotheses have been advanced postulating shared ancestry with Austroasiatic, or Tibeto-Burman-speaking populations as well as aboriginal roots in the Tarai. Several Tharu groups speak a variety of Indo-Aryan languages, but have traditionally been described by ethnographers as representing East Asian phenotype. Their ancestry and intra-population diversity has previously been tested only for haploid (mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosome) markers in a small portion of the population. This study presents the first systematic genetic survey of the Tharu from both Nepal and two Indian states of Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh, using genome-wide SNPs and haploid markers. We show that the Tharu have dual genetic ancestry as up to one-half of their gene pool is of East Asian origin. Within the South Asian proportion of the Tharu genetic ancestry, we see vestiges of their common origin in the north of the South Asian Subcontinent manifested by mitochondrial DNA haplogroup M43.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the Tharu community for the kind participation to this study. Chandana Basu Mallick for useful discussion and proof read. This study was supported by the European Union European Regional Development Fund through the Centre of Excellence in Genomics to Estonian Biocentre and University of Tartu to RV, MM and GC, by Tartu University grant (PBGMR06901) to TK and other supporting funding sources were ERC Starting Investigator grant (FP7 – 261213) to TK; Estonian Institutional Research grant IUT24-1 to RV; European Commission grant (ECOGENE 205419) to RV; Estonian Science Foundation grant (8973) to MM and UK-India Education Research Initiative (RG47772) grant to FC, MML, KT and TK. KT was supported by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Government of India (GENESIS: BSC0121) and (BSC 0208). LS was supported by Bhatnagar (CSIR) and JC Bose (DST) Fellowships, Government of India. AKP and RT were supported by the European Social Funds Doctoral Studies and Internationalisation Programme DoRa. The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. This work was carried out in part in the High Performance Computing Center of University of Tartu.
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Chaubey, G., Singh, M., Crivellaro, F. et al. Unravelling the distinct strains of Tharu ancestry. Eur J Hum Genet 22, 1404–1412 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/ejhg.2014.36
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ejhg.2014.36
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