Hyderabad: The maternal genetic ancestry of population in Nepal is a mixture of South and East-Asian population, a first of its kind largest genetic study of population of Nepal, taken-up by an international team of researchers led by Dr. K Thangaraj of Hyderabad-based Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), said. The findings of the genetic study of the population of Nepal were published on October 15 in the journal Human Genetics.
“This is the first largest study on the Nepali populations, where we have analyzed the mitochondrial DNA sequence of 999 individuals from different ethnic groups of Nepal, including Newar, Magar, Sherpa, Brahmin, Tharu, Tamang, and populations from Kathmandu and Eastern Nepal and found that most Nepali populations have derived their maternal ancestry from the lowland populations than the highlanders,” Dr. K Thangaraj, who is presently the Director of Hyderabad-based Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD), Hyderabad, said.