Skip to main content
Log in

Population and genomic lessons from genetic analysis of two Indian populations

Human Genetics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Indian demographic history includes special features such as founder effects, interpopulation segregation, complex social structure with a caste system and elevated frequency of consanguineous marriages. It also presents a higher frequency for some rare mendelian disorders and in the last two decades increased prevalence of some complex disorders. Despite the fact that India represents about one-sixth of the human population, deep genetic studies from this terrain have been scarce. In this study, we analyzed high-density genotyping and whole-exome sequencing data of a North and a South Indian population. Indian populations show higher differentiation levels than those reported between populations of other continents. In this work, we have analyzed its consequences, by specifically assessing the transferability of genetic markers from or to Indian populations. We show that there is limited genetic marker portability from available genetic resources such as HapMap or the 1,000 Genomes Project to Indian populations, which also present an excess of private rare variants. Conversely, tagSNPs show a high level of portability between the two Indian populations, in contrast to the common belief that North and South Indian populations are genetically very different. By estimating kinship from mates and consanguinity in our data from trios, we also describe different patterns of assortative mating and inbreeding in the two populations, in agreement with distinct mating preferences and social structures. In addition, this analysis has allowed us to describe genomic regions under recent adaptive selection, indicating differential adaptive histories for North and South Indian populations. Our findings highlight the importance of considering demography for design and analysis of genetic studies, as well as the need for extending human genetic variation catalogs to new populations and particularly to those with particular demographic histories.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7

References

Download references

Acknowledgments

We thank Lara Nonell and Eulàlia Puigdecanet from the Servei d’Anàlisi de Microarrays (IMIM) for their invaluable help. We would like to acknowledge David Sondervan and Ingrid Bakker from the section Medical Genomics of the VUMC for sequencing of the samples. We thank Dr. A. R Rao and Dr. Namita Sidhu from IASRI, New Delhi, India for statistical assistance in the early part of the study. We deeply thank Txema Heredia, Ángel Carreño and Jordi Rambla for computational support, Marc Pybus for his help in the selection analysis, and David Comas for critical reading of the manuscript. International fellowship funded by Center for Neurogenomics and Cognitive Research (CNCR), VU, Amsterdam, The Netherlands to GJ; Research grant from J C Bose fellowship to BKT; grant # BT/01/COE/07/UDSC to BKT and salary support to GJ are gratefully acknowledged. FC was supported by a Beatriu de Pinós (2010-BP- B-00128) fellowship and MM by a PhD grant both from AGAUR (Generalitat de Catalunya). Funding to FC by grant SAF2012-35025 from the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (Spain); Funding to JB by grants BFU2010-19443 from the Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología (Spain), PRI-PIBIN-2011-0942 from the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (Spain), and from the Direcció General de Recerca, Generalitat de Catalunya (Grup de Recerca Consolidat 2009 SGR 1101).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to B. K. Thelma or Ferran Casals.

Additional information

G. Juyal and M. Mondal have contributed equally to this work.

B. K. Thelma and F. Casals are co-senior authors.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Supplementary material 1 (DOCX 131 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Juyal, G., Mondal, M., Luisi, P. et al. Population and genomic lessons from genetic analysis of two Indian populations. Hum Genet 133, 1273–1287 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00439-014-1462-0

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00439-014-1462-0

Keywords

Navigation