Approach for the study of contemporary Mexican population structure using mitochondrial haplogroups in databases.

Abstract

In the past, the structure of contemporary Mexican human groups has been studied by means of different molecular markers, with a main focus on indigenous populations. Mestizo human groups, predominant in the modern population, have not been extensively studied. For this reason, we searched the Nucleotide database of the National Center of Biotechnology Information (NCBI) for complete mitochondrial genome sequences of indigenous, mestizo Mexican and Mexican-American populations living in the United States. They were classified according to the polymorphisms associated with mitochondrial haplogroups and compared with the population structure of 14 representative indigenous groups. The intention of this work is to provide a frame of reference for the potential use of information available in open access public genomic databases and its possible applications in research projects in physical anthropology. The exercise of this problem case is done, providing basic information on the methods to access reference sequences of Latin American populations in a clear language for non-expert users in bioinformatics disciplines.

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