New genetic evidence confirms the ethnic unity of the Roma, better known as Gypsies--a finding that may bolster the group's legal standing in Europe and one day help reveal clues to genetic diseases. The study, published in the December issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics, shows that Roma across Europe descend from a small group of Asian ancestors. This fits linguistic evidence that the Roma originated in India between 900 and 1100 years ago.

The Roma have lived in Europe for at least 800 years, often as travelers on the fringe of society, and sometimes suffering enslavement and racial hatred. Alongside the political debate over their citizenship, anthropologists and linguists have debated whether
they are a single ethnic group or a mix of racial lineages defined by their marginalized position.

To trace the ancestry of the Roma, the researchers--led by Luba Kalaydjieva of Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia--studied the DNA of 275 unrelated men from 14 distinct Romani populations. They looked at both the Y chromosome and DNA from the mitochondria, which contain patterns of mutations, known as haplogroups, that can
show whether two populations descend from common ancestors. About 45% of the Y chromosomes belonged to haplogroup VI-68, a signature of Asian ancestry; similarly, about 25% of the men carried the Asian haplogroup M. Furthermore, the men showed very little diversity within these haplogroups, implying that they inherited their genes
from a small founder population.

The study is valuable ... for confirming the very fact of Indian descent, which has been increasingly contested by a small number of scholars in recent times, says Ian Hancock, a linguist at the University of Texas, Austin, and, until last year, the official Romani representative to the United Nations. "The founder event ... is interesting and it looks credible, adds David Goldstein, a geneticist at University College London.

Kalaydjieva says she hopes the study will promote unity among the widely scattered Roma and encourage governments to recognize them as a true ethnic group protected under existing antidiscrimination laws. Research may benefit as well, Goldstein says. Genes that predispose to disease are often easier to find in genetically homogeneous
populations, such as the Finns or the Jews, he says. Studying the Romani may also shed new light on afflictions that strike all ethnicities.

--BEN SHOUSE

>From Academic Press Daily inScight 4 December 2001

Related links from the article above: