Croatian maternal and paternal genetic heritage in a wider European context

Located in the Southeastern Europe, as a part of a wider Mediterranean region, contemporary Croatian territory has been for millenniums a crossroad of prehistoric and historic migrations, as well as a corridor and most probably a point of origin for a gene flow between distant regions. While Croatian mainland population genetically fits very well into the broader European context, its Eastern Adriatic islands population in many cases showed some deviations from the standard European background in frequency and composition of certain haplogroups, both in paternal and maternal genetic structure. Some of our islands (Cres, Rab, Mljet) can be considered as genetic outliers, not only on a local, but also on a European level. Distinct features of the Adriatic island isolates such as their reproductive and geographic isolation and high inbreeding level together with significant effect of evolutionary forces enabled for certain (pre)historic demographic events to be captured and mirrored in the genetic structure of their contemporary populations as a relic of past events. This lecture will give short overview of past and present genetic research in the Institute for Anthropological Research and our contribution in the MEDIGENE project.