Y chromosome Haplogroups among the Balamogi and Bagwere of Eastern Uganda

Abstract

Uganda is one of the African countries with acomplex and diverse language situation, it’s a multicultural and multilingual society. Populations in Uganda belong to four ethnics that is to say Bantu, Nilotics, kuliak and central Sudanic. However, the human diversity in Uganda’s population has not been studied well, Studying using available genetic markers such as the Y chromosome paternal marker will help understand. This study aims at establishing the human genetic diversity among the Balamogi and Bagwere of Eastern Uganda 86 archived saliva samples from two Ugandan populations that is say Balamogi, Bagwere were studied for Y chromosome analyses, DNA was extracted from the samples different types of PCR carried out and obtained data was compared with published data such as for the Karamojongs, SW Uganda (Banyakore, Bahororo and Bafumbira). Seven biallelic markers were obtained namely A3-M32, B-M181, E1-M33, E2-M75, E3a-M2, E3b2 and E3b3 in 86 individuals from the Balamogi (40) and Bagwere (46).

E3a-M2 and A3-M32 were common among all populations; E3a-M2 had the highest frequency with 40% and 54.35% among the Balamogi and Bagwere respectively. Haplogroup A3-M32obtained population frequencies of 30% and 15.22% in the Balamogi and Bagwere, Haplogroup B-M181 was only found in the Balamogi at a frequency of 7.5%. Haplogroup E3a-M2 obtained the highest frequency that in the studied population due it being a marker of the Bantu. Haplogroup A3-M32 obtained the highest of 33.33% in the karamojongs than in the SW Uganda population. The greatest genetic distance was observed between the karamojongs and SW Uganda (FST=0.44457, P<0.05) while the smallest genetic distance was between the Bagwere and Balamogi (FST=0.09369, P<0.05). All the P values were significant that is to say P<< 0.05 which indicates that the studied populations are closer hence arose from a common population in the past. The PCA plot based on Haplogroup frequencies clusters the studied population closer and the karamojongs further from the SW Uganda population as obtained by the genetic distance. Although the neighbor joining tree clusters the Balamogi and the Karamojongs with a distance of Bootstrap=70 while the distance between the Bagwere and SW Uganda is with Bootstrap=80. From the research, the data obtained shows that the Y chromosome is an important biallelic marker for studying genetic variations among populations and that there is no difference in the close relatedness between the Balamogi and Bagwere of Eastern Uganda.