European Population Substructure: Clustering of Northern and Southern Populations

Using a genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) panel, we observed population structure in a diverse group of Europeans and European Americans.Under a variety of conditions and tests, there is a consistent and reproducible distinction between ''northern'' and ''southern'' European population groups: most individual participants with southern European ancestry (Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Greek) have .85%membership in the ''southern'' population; and most northern, western, eastern, and central Europeans have .90% in the ''northern'' population group.Ashkenazi Jewish as well as Sephardic Jewish origin also showed .85%membership in the ''southern'' population, consistent with a later Mediterranean origin of these ethnic groups.Based on this work, we have developed a core set of informative SNP markers that can control for this partition in European population structure in a variety of clinical and genetic studies.