Ethnic Contributions to the Puerto Rican Mitochondrial Gene Pool

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This research aims to estimate of the maternal contribution of Caucasians, Sub-Saharan Africans and Native Americans to the human gene pool in various geographic regions of Puerto Rico. The history of Puerto Rico strongly suggests that intense genetic admixture has occurred continuously since the Spanish colonization commenced in 1508. The genetic admixture has been characterized by a sexual asymmetry in which the male component is commonly represented by Caucasians while the female component is represented by Sub-Saharan Africans or Native Americans. However, little can be deduced from history about the sexual balance of Native American and Sub-Saharan African mixed couples, or the degree of inbreeding within each ethnic group. Furthermore, recent mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) experiments suggest that aspects of the genetic contribution of ethnic groups among various geographic regions in Puerto Rico may have been overlooked. This will be especially meaningful in light of the claimed identity crisis suffered by Puerto Ricans and by their special political relationship with the United States. The aim will be attained by the haplogroup identification of 640 mtDNAs representative of various geographic regions of Puerto Rico. The haplogroup of 96 to 100% of the mtDNAs will be identified through restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP). The rest will be identified by DNA sequencing of the HV-1 region. Because of the high continent-specificity of the haplogroups, the biological origin of those mtDNAs whose haplogroup will be identified will be determined in 100% of the Native Americans, 97.1% of the Sub-Saharan Africans and 94.6% of the Caucasians.In addition this research will allow the training of a number of undergraduate students at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez in a variety of techniques currently employed in molecular anthropology research.