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Y-chromosomal insights into the genetic impact of the caste system in India

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Abstract

The caste system has persisted in Indian Hindu society for around 3,500 years. Like the Y chromosome, caste is defined at birth, and males cannot change their caste. In order to investigate the genetic consequences of this system, we have analysed male-lineage variation in a sample of 227 Indian men of known caste, 141 from the Jaunpur district of Uttar Pradesh and 86 from the rest of India. We typed 131 Y-chromosomal binary markers and 16 microsatellites. We find striking evidence for male substructure: in particular, Brahmins and Kshatriyas (but not other castes) from Jaunpur each show low diversity and the predominance of a single distinct cluster of haplotypes. These findings confirm the genetic isolation and drift within the Jaunpur upper castes, which are likely to result from founder effects and social factors. In the other castes, there may be either larger effective population sizes, or less strict isolation, or both.

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Acknowledgments

We thank all sample donors for participating in this project, and Kamal Bagai for help with sample collection. We also thank Ed Southern for his interest and contribution to this work, Yali Xue with advice on data analysis and Denise Carvalho-Silva for comments on the manuscript. TZ and CTS are supported by The Wellcome Trust.

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Author notes

  1. Tatiana Zerjal

    Present address: Station de Génétique Végétale, Ferme du Moulon, Gif-sur-Yvette, France

  2. Edmund Y. S. Ling & Silvia Paracchini

    Present address: Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, Oxford, UK

  3. Jennifer Kearley

    Present address: Leukocyte Biology Section, National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College, London, UK

  4. Stefania Bertoneri

    Present address: Anthropology Unit, Department of Ethnology, Ecology and Evolution, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambs, CB10 1SA, UK

    Tatiana Zerjal & Chris Tyler-Smith

  2. Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Tatiana Zerjal, Arpita Pandya, Edmund Y. S. Ling, Jennifer Kearley, Stefania Bertoneri, Silvia Paracchini & Chris Tyler-Smith

  3. Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, India

    Kumarasamy Thangaraj & Lalji Singh

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  1. Tatiana Zerjal
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Correspondence to Chris Tyler-Smith.

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Tatiana Zerjal and Arpita Pandya contributed equally to this work.

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Zerjal, T., Pandya, A., Thangaraj, K. et al. Y-chromosomal insights into the genetic impact of the caste system in India. Hum Genet 121, 137–144 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00439-006-0282-2

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