Second BABAO 2013 Conference Abstract: Constructing Identities Session. César Augusto FORTES-LIMA, Jean-Michel DUGOUJON Tracing the origins of African descendant communities in South America The principal goal of this study is to retrace the genetic origin of African American descendants in South America, direct descendants of slaves who escaped their masters during the era of plantation slavery (16th-19th centuries), these self-emancipated communities have an oral history of the communities’ formation, and subsequently maintaining their cultural independence and they have developed a thriving community that has continued to the present day. On previous studies about the genetic origin of the Noir Marron in French Guiana which revealed an African inheritance exceptionally preserved in its composition and in its diversity and pointed toward the Bight of Benin. For obtaining a better knowledge of the genetic identity of Noir Marron communities (Saramaka, Paramaka, Ndjuka and Aluku) the main aims of this study are duals; on the one hand to achieve a high characterisation of the genetic diversity of the in French Guiana as well as other communities of African Americans in Colombia and Brazil, and on the other hand to reconstruct the origin and genetic history in these communities in order to estimate the contribution of historical African areas of slavery. For these purpose we are investigating the genetic variability of 47 Y-chromosome STRs and the whole mtDNA genome of these communities and others populations from West Africa. Furthermore we are carrying the genotyping over 4.5 million genome-wide Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs).
Posted on: Fri, 19 Jul 2013 18:40:33 +0000
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