Abstract
The Kra–Dai linguistic family includes Thai and Lao as well as a great number of languages spoken by ethnic minorities in Southeast Asia. In Thailand, a dozen of other Kra–Dai languages are spoken in addition to Thai, the national language. The genetic structure of the Kra–Dai-speaking populations in Thailand has been studied extensively using uniparentally inherited markers. To extend this line of genetic investigation, this study used 15 autosomal microsatellites of 500 individuals from 11 populations, belonging to nine Kra–Dai ethnicities, namely, the Kaleung, Phu Thai, Saek, Nyo, Lao Isan, Yuan, Black Tai, Phuan and Lue. These ethnolinguistic groups are dispersed in three different geographic regions of Thailand, that is, Northern, Northeastern and Central. The results show a very low average of pairwised Fst (0.0099), as well as no population substructure based on STRUCTURE analysis, indicating genetic homogeneity within the Kra–Dai-speaking group, possibly owing to shared linguistic ancestry. The Mantel test, an analysis of molecular variance, and the approximate Bayesian computation procedure employed to evaluate potential factors for driving genetic diversity revealed that language is the predominant factor affecting genetic variations, whereas geography is not. The result of distance-based clustering analyses and spatial analysis of molecular variance revealed genetic distinctions of some populations, reflecting the effects of genetic drift and gene flow on allele frequency within populations, in concordance with the result of R-matrix regression. The genetic and linguistic affiliations of the contemporary Kra–Dai-speaking groups are consistent with each other despite certain deviation due to various evolutionary factors that may have occurred during their migrations and resettlements.
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Acknowledgements
We are deeply grateful to all volunteers for contributing buccal swabs samples. We thank Dr Jatupol Kampuansai for donating the Lue’s DNA samples. SS was supported by Faculty of Science, Khon Kaen University. MS was supported by four financial groups as follows: (1) Naresuan University, (2) Department of Molecular and Medical Genetics, University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth, Texas, (3) the Higher Education Research Promotion and National Research University, Office of the Higher Education Commission and (4) Thailand Research Fund (Grant number MRG5480012). PP was supported by the Ratchadaphiseksomphot Endowment Fund of Chulalongkorn University (RES560530179-HS). SG was supported by the European Research Council, ERC Advanced Grant Agreement No. 295733, ‘LanGeLin’ Project. WK was funded by the Institute for the Promotion of Teaching Science and Technology (IPST) under the Research Fund for DPST Graduates with First Placement (Grant number 039/2555).
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Srithawong, S., Srikummool, M., Pittayaporn, P. et al. Genetic and linguistic correlation of the Kra–Dai-speaking groups in Thailand. J Hum Genet 60, 371–380 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/jhg.2015.32
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/jhg.2015.32
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