Admixture and relationships of the population of Jacobina, Bahia, Brazil

As part of the Cornell-Bahia project on leishmaniasis, the people of Jacobina in the state of Bahia in northeastern Brazil were studied for five genetic polymorphisms: ABO blood groups, hemoglobin variants, PGM1, 6PGD, and adenylate kinase. A maximum likelihood method of calculation of frequency of genes for these traits indicates that the ancestry of the people is 45% African, 43% Portuguese, and 12% Brazilian Indian. This estimate is similar to previous estimates of admixture in the people of northeastern Brazil, except for more African and less Caucasian ancestry. Previous distance relationships, based upon physical traits only, showed the population of Jacobina to be similar to Seminole Indians of Florida and equally distant from Whites and Blacks. While not strictly comparable, the genetic and morphologic pictures of relationships are compatible and show concordance with surnames. The presence of Hemoglobin C and the frequencies of alleles of PGM1 and 6PGD in the Jacobina population are consistent with the greater importation of Africans into Brazil from Costa de Mina on the Guinea Coast than from Angola. © 1996 Wiley-Liss, Inc.