Phylogenetic analysis and forensic evaluation among Rakhine, Marma, Hajong, and Manipuri tribes from four culturally defined regions of Bangladesh using 17 Y-chromosomal STRs.

We have analyzed haplotypes for 17 Y chromosomal STR loci in Bangladeshi mainstream Bengali population and four largest ethnic groups inhabiting the North-Eastern and Southern region of Bangladesh using AmpFlSTR® Yfiler® PCR amplification systems. A total of 667 haplotypes from Bangladeshi Bangali, 157 from Rakhine, 144 from Marma, 112 from Hajong, and 136 from Manipuri individuals were observed with corresponding discrimination capacity (DC) of 0.973 for Bengali, 0.723 for Rakhine, 0.743 for Marma, 0.794 for Hajong, and 0.720 for Manipuri groups, respectively. In order to investigate genetic relationship and the pattern of paternal contributions of the studied population, a comparison of the studied data with the published data from Y-STR haplotype reference database (YHRD) was conducted based on analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA). Construction of neighbour-joining tree revealed that the Rakhine population lies closer to a clade consisting, Korean and Japanese population. The Hajong population showed close affinity with Riang (Tripura, India) tribe followed by Marma population. On the other hand, Manipuri group is closely related to Thai population followed by Tamil and mainstream Bengali population.