A New Characterized Y-STR and Its Allele Frequencies Distribution in 8 Chinese Populations

Y chromosome genomic DNA was used to search for new Y-specific short tandem repeats (Y-STRs) and a new Y-STR, DYS708, has been characterized. In 8 different Chinese populations, including Guangdong Han, Henan Han, Bai, Tibetan, Uygur, Tujia, Mongolia and Zhuang, 9 successive alleles have been found by PCR- based method. The sequences of different alleles showed that this locus included four blocks of AGAT and two blocks of AGAC and that length variations between existed not only in the largest block of AGAT, but also in the larger block of AGAC repeats. The name of each allele was the sum of the repeats number of these six repeats blocks ranging from 22 to 30 according to ISFG. The gene diversity was ranged between 0.7659 in Uygur and 0.6327 in Bai. Based on Nei' s genetic distance, the genetic tree of these 8 populations was constructed. It was showed in the tree that Guangdong Han was closer to Bai than to Henan Han indicating gene flow between Guang- dong Han and local minority, and Tujia was closer to Henan Han than to Guangdong Han implying that Tujia might come from northern part of China. These results agreed with the conclusionbasedon other genetic markers. All of the results indicated that DYS708 is a useful genetic marker and could be applied to human evolution study and