Department of Anthropology, University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.
Department of Anthropology, Genetic Anthropology and Biocultural Studies Laboratory, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA.
Am J Biol Anthropol. 2024 Nov;185(3):e25029. doi: 10.1002/ajpa.25029. Epub 2024 Sep 20.
Genetic studies of contemporary Puerto Ricans reflect a demographic history characterized by admixture between Indigenous American, African, and European peoples. While previous studies provide genetic perspectives on the general Puerto Rican population, less is known about the island's sub-populations, specifically Afro-Puerto Ricans.
In this study, the genetic ancestry of Afro-Puerto Ricans is characterized and compared to other Caribbean populations. Thirty DNA samples collected among self-identified Puerto Ricans of African descent in Loíza (n = 2), Piñones (n = 13), San Juan (n = 2), Mayagüez (n = 9), and Ponce (n = 4), were genotyped at 750,000 loci on the National Geographic Genochip. We then applied unsupervised clustering and dimensionality-reduction methods to detect continental and subcontinental African and European genetic ancestry patterns.
Admixture analyses reveal that on average, the largest genetic ancestry component for Afro-Puerto Ricans is African in origin, followed by European and Indigenous American genetic ancestry components. African biogeographic origins of Afro-Puerto Ricans align most closely with contemporary peoples of Lower Guinea and the Bight of Biafra, while the European genetic ancestry component is most similar to contemporary Iberian, Italian, and Basque populations. These findings contrast with the biogeographic origins of comparative Barbadian and Puerto Rican populations.
Our results suggest that while there are similarities with regard to general patterns of genetic ancestry among African descendants in the Caribbean, there is previously unrecognized regional heterogeneity, including among Puerto Rican sub-populations. These results are also consistent with available historical sources, while providing depth absent from the documentary record, particularly with regard to African ancestry.
当代波多黎各人的遗传研究反映了一个以美洲原住民、非洲和欧洲人民混合为特征的人口历史。虽然先前的研究提供了关于一般波多黎各人的遗传观点，但对于该岛的亚人群，特别是非裔波多黎各人，了解较少。
在这项研究中，描述了非裔波多黎各人的遗传祖先，并将其与其他加勒比人群进行了比较。在 Loíza（n=2）、Piñones（n=13）、圣胡安（n=2）、马亚圭斯（n=9）和庞塞（n=4）等地，从自我认同为非洲裔的波多黎各人中收集了 30 个 DNA 样本，在 National Geographic Genochip 上对 750000 个基因座进行了基因分型。然后，我们应用无监督聚类和降维方法来检测非洲和欧洲的大陆和次大陆遗传祖先模式。
混合分析表明，非裔波多黎各人的最大遗传祖先成分平均来自非洲，其次是欧洲和美洲原住民遗传祖先成分。非裔波多黎各人的非洲生物地理起源与下几内亚和比夫拉湾的当代人民最为接近，而欧洲遗传祖先成分与当代伊比利亚、意大利和巴斯克人群最为相似。这些发现与比较巴巴多斯和波多黎各人群的生物地理起源形成对比。
我们的结果表明，虽然加勒比地区非洲裔后裔的遗传祖先模式存在相似之处，但存在以前未被认识到的区域异质性，包括波多黎各的亚人群。这些结果与现有的历史资料一致，同时提供了文件记录中缺少的深度，特别是在非洲祖先方面。
