Population genetic structure analysis and forensic evaluation of Xinjiang Uigur ethnic group on genomic deletion and insertion polymorphisms

BACKGROUND: The Uigur ethnic minority is the largest ethnic group in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China, and valuable resource for the study of ethnogeny. The objective of this study was to estimate the genetic diversities and forensic parameters of 30 insertion-deletion loci in Uigur ethnic group from Xinjiang Uigur Autonomous Region of China and to analyze the genetic relationships between Xinjiang Uigur group and other previously published groups based on population data of these loci. RESULTS: All the tested loci were conformed to Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium after Bonferroni correction. The observed and expected heterozygosity ranged from 0.3750 to 0.5515; and 0.4057 to 0.5037, respectively. The combined power of discrimination and probability of exclusion in the group were 0.99999999999940 and 0.9963, respectively. We analyzed the D(A) distance, interpopulation differentiations and population structure, conducted principal component analysis and neighbor-joining tree based on our studied group and 21 reference groups. The present results indicated that the studied Xinjiang Uigur group (represented our samples from the whole territory of Xinjiang Uigur Autonomous Region) had a close relationships with Urumchi Uigur (represented previously reported samples from Urumchi of Xinjiang) and Kazak groups. CONCLUSIONS: The present study may provide novel biological information for the study of population genetics, and can also increase our understanding of the genetic relationships between Xinjiang Uigur group and other groups. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s40064-016-2730-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.