Abstract
Current forensic mitochondrial (mt)DNA databases are limited in representative population
data of African origin. We investigated HVS-I/HVS-II sequences of 120 Tunisian and
Moroccan healthy male donors applying stringent quality criteria to assure high quality
of the data and phylogenetic alignment and notation of the sequences. Among 64 Tunisians,
56 different haplotypes were observed and the most common haplotype (16187T 16189C
16223T 16264T 16270T 16278T 16293G 16311C 73G 152C 182T 185T 195C 247A 263G 309.1C
315.1C; haplogroup (hg) L1b) was shared by four individuals. 56 Moroccans could be
assigned to 52 different haplotypes where the most common haplotype was of West Eurasian
origin with the hg H sequence motif 263G 315.1C and variations in the HVS-II polyC-stretch
(309.1C 309.2C) shared by six samples. The majority of the observed haplotypes belong
to the west Eurasian phylogeny (50% in Tunisians and 62.5% in Moroccans). Our data
are consistent with the current phylogeographic knowledge displaying the occurrence
of sub-Saharan haplogroup L sequences, found in 48.4% of Tunisians and 25% of Moroccans
as well as the presence of the two re-migrated haplogroups U6 (7.8% and 1.8% in Tunisians
and Moroccans, respectively) and M1 (1.6% in Tunisians and 8.9% in Moroccans).
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: February 26, 2009
Footnotes
☆Paper presented at the DNA in Forensics meeting, Ancona, 27–30 May, 2008.
Identification
Copyright
© 2009 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
