Statistical pattern analysis of D1S80 alleles in Northwestern Russians and worldwide database using COLLAPSE software

Polymorpbism at the locus D1S80 was studied in 283 unrelated habitants of the Northwestern Federal Region of Russia that includes the cities Arkhangel'sk, Kaliningrad, Murmansk, Novgorod, Petrozavodsk, Pskov, Saint Petersburg and surrounding districts. The sample distribution obtained was compared with the published data on 128 worldwide samples from the DNA-PCR Databank. For this purpose a new statistical technique-Similarity Pattern Analysis (SPAN) and corresponding COLLAPSE software were used and their validity and applicability were demonstrated. The main features of the method are the following: First, to measure the similarity (homogeneity) between any pair of populations in the study, the relevant sufficient statistics, Kastenbaum-Hirotsu squared distance (K-Hi(2)), is used. Second, the method is based on the collapsing principle, which pen-nits similar subsets of the sample distributions to be combined (to collapse) into distinct (locally homogeneous) groups (homoclusters). Such a procedure permits the most likely (optimal) version of the similarity pattern to be revealed. Thirdly, the discrimination among home- and hetero-clusters is based on the so-called chi(2)Reduction Principle, according to which the corresponding statistics, chi(2)reduction (CSR), as a measure of intra-cluster homogeneity should be kept non-significant after each step of collapsing. Evaluated similarities and/or dissimilarities appeared to be rather reasonable and interpretable. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All fights reserved.