Copyright © 2008 The American Society of Human Genetics. All rights reserved.
The American Journal of Human Genetics, Volume 82, Issue 4, 873-882, 28 March 2008
doi:10.1016/j.ajhg.2008.01.020
Article
Y-Chromosomal Diversity in Lebanon Is Structured by Recent Historical Events
Pierre A. Zalloua1, Yali Xue2, Jade Khalife1, Nadine Makhoul1, Labib Debiane1, Daniel E. Platt3, Ajay K. Royyuru3, Rene J. Herrera4, David F. Soria Hernanz5, Jason Blue-Smith5, R. Spencer Wells5, David Comas6, Jaume Bertranpetit6, Chris Tyler-Smith2, 
, 
, The Genographic Consortium7
1 The Lebanese American University, Chouran, Beirut 1102 2801, Lebanon
2 The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambs, CB10 1SA, UK
3 Bioinformatics and Pattern Discovery, IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Hgts, NY 10598, USA
4 Department of Biological Sciences, Florida International University, Miami, FL 33199, USA
5 The Genographic Project, National Geographic Society, Washington, DC 20036, USA
6 Unitat de Biologia Evolutiva, Departament de Ciènces Experimentals i de la Salut, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Doctor Aiguader 88, 08003 Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
Corresponding author7 See .
Abstract
Lebanon is an eastern Mediterranean country inhabited by approximately four million people with a wide variety of ethnicities and religions, including Muslim, Christian, and Druze. In the present study, 926 Lebanese men were typed with Y-chromosomal SNP and STR markers, and unusually, male genetic variation within Lebanon was found to be more strongly structured by religious affiliation than by geography. We therefore tested the hypothesis that migrations within historical times could have contributed to this situation. Y-haplogroup J∗(xJ2) was more frequent in the putative Muslim source region (the Arabian Peninsula) than in Lebanon, and it was also more frequent in Lebanese Muslims than in Lebanese non-Muslims. Conversely, haplogroup R1b was more frequent in the putative Christian source region (western Europe) than in Lebanon and was also more frequent in Lebanese Christians than in Lebanese non-Christians. The most common R1b STR-haplotype in Lebanese Christians was otherwise highly specific for western Europe and was unlikely to have reached its current frequency in Lebanese Christians without admixture. We therefore suggest that the Islamic expansion from the Arabian Peninsula beginning in the seventh century CE introduced lineages typical of this area into those who subsequently became Lebanese Muslims, whereas the Crusader activity in the 11th–13th centuries CE introduced western European lineages into Lebanese Christians.
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