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. 2023 Sep 1;26(10):107797.
doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.107797. eCollection 2023 Oct 20.

Reconstructing the population history of the Sinhalese, the major ethnic group in Śrī Laṅkā

Prajjval Pratap Singh  1 , Sachin Kumar  2 , Nagarjuna Pasupuleti  3 , P R Weerasooriya  4 , George van Driem  5 , Kamani H Tennekoon  4 , Niraj Rai  2 , Gyaneshwer Chaubey  1 , R Ranasinghe  4
Affiliations

Reconstructing the population history of the Sinhalese, the major ethnic group in Śrī Laṅkā

Prajjval Pratap Singh et al. iScience. .

Abstract

The Sinhalese are the major ethnic group in Śrī Laṅkā, inhabiting nearly the whole length and breadth of the island. They speak an Indo-European language of the Indo-Iranian branch, which is held to originate in northwestern India, going back to at least the fifth century BC. Previous genetic studies on low-resolution markers failed to infer the genomic history of the Sinhalese population. Therefore, we have performed a high-resolution fine-grained genetic study of the Sinhalese population and, in the broader context, we attempted to reconstruct the genetic history of Śrī Laṅkā. Our allele-frequency-based analysis showed a tight cluster of Sinhalese and Tamil populations, suggesting strong gene flow beyond the boundary of ethnicity and language. Interestingly, the haplotype-based analysis preserved a trace of the North Indian affiliation to the Sinhalese population. Overall, in the South Asian context, Śrī Laṅkān ethnic groups are genetically more homogeneous than others.

Keywords: Evolutionary history; Genotyping; Phylogenetics.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

None
Graphical abstract
Figure 1
Figure 1
Comparison of maternal ancestry components between Śrī Laṅkā and South India populations
Figure 2
Figure 2
The principal component analysis of studied populations with respect to the Eurasian populations
Figure 3
Figure 3
The bar plot of ADMIXTURE analysis showing the ancestral component sharing of studied populations. The Indian and Śrī Laṅkān ethnic groups are projected
Figure 4
Figure 4
The Maximum Likelihood (ML) tree of Eurasian populations shows the studied populations’ genetic affinity. The closest branch of our target populations are zoomed-in and shown in a subset
Figure 5
Figure 5
The Runs of Homozygosity (RoH) plot of target populations with respect to the other South Asian ethnic groups
Figure 6
Figure 6
The scatterplot of IBD (Identity by descent) sharing for smaller (x axis) and larger (y axis) IBD segments
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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