Comments on: Ashkenazi Jews are not inbred – 2

By: Maju

Maju — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 07:27:45 +0000

But in my exercise of comparing Sephardi Jews (I had to discard Ashkenazim because they behaved as inbred: forming a distinct cluster very early on) with other West Asians. It becomes obvious that Jews, Turks and Cypriots share the main component of all them (cyan in this K=6 graph). In that exercise, Europeans were intently removed (because neither Atzmon'10 nor Behar'10 suggested they are too important in Jewish genetics, same for Iranians, other Arabs or North Africans) and Jews certainly cluster with Anatolians/Cypriots very tightly no matter the K-depth. They just have slightly more of two "Palestinian" components (yellow and blue) and slightly less of the "Lebanese" green component - but tiny details all in all. "the cypriots may well be admixed. the turks certainly are" Are they? I mean: where do you get that from? They are clinally transitional but that's not the same as "admixed", as recently admixed. If they are admixed we must think of very ancient admixture, IMO.

By: Razib Khan

Razib Khan — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 15:25:56 +0000

I do not see why.

i thought i explained the LD decay method well enough above, but if not:

http://www.pnas.org/content/107/suppl.2/8954.full
http://www.genetics.org/content/185/2/611.full

the cypriots may well be admixed. the turks certainly are, though the pattern will be different from the AJ i bet (the blocks will be clearer since the admixture is with east asians, but less numerous since the quantum is small.

By: Maju

Maju — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 07:54:26 +0000

“Ashkenazi Jews exhibit an LD pattern of a population which went through admixture between Europeans and Middle Easterners, not just a population whose allele frequencies lay between these two groups”.

I do not see why. Have you (or whoever) compared with Cypriots and Turks.? I say because these populations are of the kind “whose allele frequencies lay between these two groups” and incidentally have a genetic signature almost identical to Western Jews (and when Ashkeanzim and Moroccan Jews refuse to behave properly in Admixture, at least with the “less capricious” Sephardites).

Of course it is possible that Turks and Cypriots also have the signature of peoples “which went through admixture between Europeans and Middle Easterners” (I’d buy that provided the appropriate, old enough, time frame). True that Ashkenazim show some extra European admixture than other Western Jews but that should not be enough to claim what you say.

By: Joe Q.

Joe Q. — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 23:42:29 +0000

Lauren Bacall (pictured) is first cousin to the current President of Israel, Shimon Peres. (Bacall’s family name at birth was Persky, from which ‘Peres’ is derived.)

By: Razib Khan

Razib Khan — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 23:17:22 +0000

#1, is your question a joke? it’s kind of a dumb thing to ask after this post, where i’m addressing a totally different issue. but, i think the question is close to being “not-even-wrong.” the terms “european” and “middle eastern” define two almost arbitrarily defined sets, where there is a lot of variation within them. e.g., if you use “european” as italian, and “middle eastern” as qatari, then i think AJ are more “european.” if you use “european” as lithuanian and “middle eastern” as syrian, then AJ are more “middle eastern.”

#2, your citations are OK, but a little out of date, even if they are pretty good (yeah, 2008 is now out of date in this field!). probably better

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/06/genetics-the-jewish-question/
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/06/genetics-the-jewish-question/

By: Solis

Solis — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 23:07:02 +0000

Luke, they fall somewhat in-between the two. My own opinion is that they are closer to European populations than to the Middle East populations.

http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1471-2156-10-80.pdf

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17245410?dopt=Abstract

http://genomebiology.com/content/pdf/gb-2009-10-1-r7.pdf

By: Luke Raines

Luke Raines — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 21:43:49 +0000

So are Ashkenazi Jews more Middle Eastern than European or more European than Middle Eastern?