• DOI:10.1002/humu.22468
• Corpus ID: 23291764

Seeing the Wood for the Trees: A Minimal Reference Phylogeny for the Human Y Chromosome

@article{Oven2014SeeingTW,
  title={Seeing the Wood for the Trees: A Minimal Reference Phylogeny for the Human Y Chromosome},
  author={Mannis van Oven and Anneleen Van Geystelen and Manfred Kayser and Ronny Decorte and Maarten H. D. Larmuseau},
  journal={Human Mutation},
  year={2014},
  volume={35}
}

• M. Oven, A. Geystelen, +2 authors M. Larmuseau
• Published 1 February 2014
• Biology
• Human Mutation

During the last few decades, a wealth of studies dedicated to the human Y chromosome and its DNA variation, in particular Y‐chromosome single‐nucleotide polymorphisms (Y‐SNPs), has led to the construction of a well‐established Y‐chromosome phylogeny. Since the recent advent of new sequencing technologies, the discovery of additional Y‐SNPs is exploding and their continuous incorporation in the phylogenetic tree is leading to an ever higher resolution. However, the large and increasing amount of information included in the “complete” Y‐chromosome phylogeny, which now already includes many thousands of identified Y‐SNPs, can be overwhelming and complicates its understanding as well as the task of selecting suitable markers for genotyping purposes in evolutionary, demographic, anthropological, genealogical, medical, and forensic studies. As a solution, we introduce a concise reference phylogeny whereby we do not aim to provide an exhaustive tree that includes all known Y‐SNPs but, rather, a quite stable reference tree aiming for optimal global discrimination capacity based on a strongly reduced set that includes only the most resolving Y‐SNPs. Furthermore, with this reference tree, we wish to propose a common standard for Y‐marker as well as Y‐haplogroup nomenclature. The current version of our tree is based on a core set of 417 branch‐defining Y‐SNPs and is available online at http://www.phylotree.org/Y.