Optimizing the prediction of eye and hair color for North Eurasian populations according to DNA-analysis

Prediction of eye and hair color based on genotype has become a recognized and widely used tool in forensic genetics, as well as in studies of ancient populations. However, the accuracy of this tool has been studied only for residents of Western and Central Europe, while populations from border regions between Europe and Asia (e.g. the Caucasus and the Urals) also carry light pigmentation phenotypes.

BMC Genоmics (IF=3.594 according JCR 2019) published the results of a joint work of researchers of the FSBI RCMG Human Population Genetics Laboratory (headed by Professor Balanovska E., Doctor of biological science) and  the Genomic Geography Laboratory at the RAS Institute of General Genetics, Lomonosov Moscow State University, RAS Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology and etc.

The authors performed exogenous sequencing of genes involved in controlling hair pigmentation and found five previously undescribed single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) capable of predicting eye color for the study populations on a par with two previously known SNPs. Four of these five polymorphisms are in the HERC2 gene and the fifth one is in an intergenic region. These SNPs have a high frequency in most of the studied populations. The data obtained is expected to improve the accuracy of eye and hair color predictions.

Balanovska E., Lukianova E., Kagazezheva J., Maurer A., Leybova N.,  Agdzhoyan A., Gorin I., Petrushenko V., Zhabagin M., Pylev V., Kostryukova E., Balanovsky O. 

Optimizing the genetic prediction of the eye and hair color for North Eurasian populations 

BMC Genomics 2020 21(Suppl 7):527 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12864-020-06923-1

https://bmcgenomics.biomedcentral.com/track/pdf/10.1186/s12864-020-06923-1