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The article examines the results of Y-STR genetic marker analysis in Brazilian and South Amerindian populations in Rio Grande do Sul. No genetic substructuring was observed in the comparisons performed with those already published. Multidimensional scaling confirmed the proposed European source of most Y-chromosome Brazilian patrilineages.

A sample of 255 Brazilian males from Rio Grande do Sul (RS), the Brazilian southernmost state, was typed for 17 Y-STR loci (DYS19, DYS389I, DYS389II, DYS390, DYS391, DYS392, DYS393, DYS437, DYS438, DYS439, DYS448, DYS456, DYS458, DYS635, YGATA_H4.1 and DYS385ab). A total of 247 haplotypes were identified, of which 239 were unique and eight were found in two individuals each. The haplotype diversity (99.98%) and discrimination capacity (96.86%) were calculated. Pairwise haplotype distances showed that the RS population is not significantly different from Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, and Argentina, is different from São Paulo, Italy, and North Portugal, and is very distant from Spain, the Amazon region, Germany, and South Amerindians. When the RS data was separated in the seven geopolitical regions, some pairs of regions were significantly different; however no region was different from the whole Brazilian sample.