Exploring Sephardic lineages in São Tomé e Príncipe

Abstract Sao Tome and Principe are the two main islands of a small archipelago located in the Gulf of Guinea, western equatorial African coast. These islands were probably uninhabited at the time of the Portuguese discovery in 1471. After the Portuguese decree of expulsion, many new-Christians fled to Sao Tome, since the inquisition was never established there. Several documents attest the continuous movement of new-Christians to these islands, which worked as a refuge from inquisitional prosecutions. To elucidate the genetic impact of the historical Jewish migrations to Sao Tome, we selected a sample of unrelated individuals based on the following criteria: (a) sharing surnames with those included in the historical reports as Jewish migrants (b) showing cultural practices putatively related to the Jewish religion. Both maternal and paternal lineages were investigated using the complete mtDNA control region, along with 22 Y-SNPs and 23 Y-STR markers. Moreover, 83 autosomal insertion/deletion markers were analyzed.