HUMAN Y CHROMOSOME LENGTH VARIATIONS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY WITH GENETIC DISTANCE BETWEEN DIFFERENT RACIAL GROUPS
BANDANA M. CHAKRABORTY *
Division of Plastic and Reconstructive surgery, Dept. of Surgery. University of Texas Medical School, University of Texas Health Science Centre at Houston, Texas, U. S. A.
RANAJIT CHAKRABORTY *
2. Centre for Demographic and Population Genetics, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Texas Health Science Centre at Houston, Texas, U. S. A.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
Analysing data from published literature it is shown that the familial correlations of human Y chromosome length is much larger than inter-cellular repeatability within individuals. This confirms the stipulation that Y chromosome length is genetically determined. However, even though there exists considerable degree of Y length polymorphism variation across different human racial groups, clustering of populations based in Y chromosome length is not exactly in congruence with the degree of genetic differentiation between populations. Some implications of these results in using Y chromosome length polymorphism for evolutionary studies are also discussed.