Inferring Chinese surnames with Y-STR profiles

Area of Science:

• Population Genetics
• Forensic Science
• Computational Biology

Background:

• Human surnames and Y-chromosomes often share co-ancestry across populations.
• Inferring surname from Y-chromosome data is intuitively possible but requires formal exploration.
• Y-chromosome Short Tandem Repeats (Y-STRs) are valuable genetic markers for population studies.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and evaluate computational methods for inferring surnames from Y-STR profiles.
• To assess the accuracy of surname inference based on Y-STR data in a large Chinese cohort.
• To explore factors influencing the accuracy of surname inference, such as sample size and loci number.

Main Methods:

• Development of two computational inference methods: cosine distance (d_cos) and coalescence distance (d_coal).
• Analysis of Y-STR variations at 15 loci for 19,009 individuals from Shandong Province, China.
• Evaluation of inference accuracy for 266 distinct surnames within the dataset.

Main Results:

• The developed methods achieved an average accuracy of 65% in pinpointing a single surname.
• Accuracy exceeded 80% when providing more than four candidate surnames.
• Increased sample size and the number of Y-STR loci significantly improved inference accuracy.

Conclusions:

• The 15 non-duplicated Y-STR loci contain sufficient information for reliable surname inference in Chinese populations.
• The developed computational methods demonstrate a promising approach for surname inference using genetic data.
• This research highlights potential applications of Y-STR analysis in forensic investigations.