Phylogeography of French male lineages.

Abstract: The genetic landscape of European Y-chromosomes has been widely surveyed. However, French male lineages are still poorly characterized, being scarce the current genetic contribution to the demographic history of France. We have studied, at Y-chromosome level, French population from 7 different regions throughout France: Nord-Pas-de-Calais (Lille), Bretagne (Rennes), Alsace (Strasbourg), Île-de-France (Paris), Auvergne (Clermont-Ferrand), Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur (Marseille) and Midi-Pyrénées (Toulouse). More than five hundred male samples were genotyped for 27 Y-chromosome biallelic markers and 17 Y-STRs, in order to assess the degree of population sub-structuring of male lineages on this population. The results obtained show a significant level of population sub-structuring when Bretagne was compared with the remaining regions grouping together as a single cluster, obtaining a value of 6.83% (p =0.0000) for the proportion of the total variance explained by differences between populations, when using Y-SNPs data. Our data will contribute to elucidate the genetic composition of France as well as to reconstruct the demographic history of European populations. Likewise, the population sub-structuring detected entails that special care must be taken when Y-chromosome databases of France are used for forensic casework. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]