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Post by Admin on Apr 19, 2022 10:03:08 GMT
Irish Travellers say racism is causing a suicide crisis - BBC News 8,685 views Apr 19, 2022 Racism and discrimination are being blamed for high suicide rates amongst Irish Travellers. They suffer some of the worst discrimination and poverty of any ethnic group in Europe, according to EU research. Suicide accounts for more than one in 10 deaths in the community. Irish Traveller Mags Casey has lost 28 family members to suicide over a 10-year period, one of whom was her 13-year-old cousin. If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this video, please visit the BBC Action Line here: bbc.in/3uUaS8rAccording to genetics expert Jim Wilson from the University of Edinburgh, though it is clear Travellers diverged from the settled community, it is not clear why. He said Travellers are a distinct genetic group as different from the settled Irish as Icelanders are from Norwegians. The revelation was made on RTÉ’s documentary, Blood of the Travellers, and will put further pressure on the Government to recognise Travellers as a distinct group of people. In March, the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination expressed concern at the state’s “persistent refusal” to recognise Travellers as an ethnic minority, and pointed out that they satisfied the internationally recognised criteria for such a group. In the first-ever project of its kind, DNA samples were taken from 40 Travellers around the country, and these were analysed by a team of scientists from the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin, the University of Edinburgh and Ethnoancestory.com to try and unlock the history of Ireland’s Travelling people. What they found confirms that Travellers have a shared heritage with settled people but that they separated at some point between 1,000 and 2,000 years ago. The programme was initiated by producer Liam McGrath and former Olympic boxer Francie Barrett, who said he wanted to uncover the history of his people and to try to understand why their culture is in danger of being wiped out. Enlisting the help of geneticists Dr Wilson and Dr Gianpiero Cavalleri from the Royal College of Surgeons, they analysed the DNA samples collected to try and trace the origins of Irish Travellers. Dr Wilson said he wants to carry out more research to pin down a more accurate date for the split and look at historical records for that period to try and find out why it occurred. Recognition as an ethnic group would bring Travellers within the remit of various protections in international agreements.
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Post by Admin on Apr 19, 2022 17:53:25 GMT
The origins of the Traveller population in Ireland are discussed in a study published in Scientific Reports this week. The research suggests that Travellers genetically diverged from the rest of the Irish population between 200-420 years ago. This runs contrary to a popular hypothesis that places their origins during the Great Famine (1845-1852). The Traveller community within Ireland consists of between 29,000-40,000 individuals, representing 0.6% of the total population. Owing to a lack of documentary evidence on their history, the origin of Irish Travellers is a source of debate, with no single explanation widely accepted. By comparing genetic data from 42 Irish Traveller individuals with 143 European Roma, 2232 settled Irish, 2039 British, 5964 European and 931 individuals from the rest of the world, Gianpiero Cavalleri and colleagues investigated the relationship between Travellers and neighbouring populations. The authors found that the Irish Traveller population has an ancestral Irish origin, closely resembling the wider Irish population, with no particular genetic link to the European Roma. The authors suggest that the Irish Travellers diverged from the rest of the population in Ireland at least eight generations ago (assuming each generation to be 30 years). The authors note that a better understanding of the degree of homozygosity (the number of identical forms of the same genes in the population) and the drift to rarer variants of genes within the Irish Traveller population could have implications for disease mapping within Ireland. Gene study reveals Irish Travellers' ancestry Irish Travellers are of Irish ancestral origin and have no particular genetic ties to European Roma groups, a DNA study has found. The research offers the first estimates of when the community split from the settled Irish population, giving a rare glimpse into their history and heritage. DNA links Researchers led by the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) and the University of Edinburgh analysed genetic information from 42 people who identified as Irish Travellers. The team compared variations in their DNA code with that of 143 European Roma, 2,232 settled Irish, 2,039 British and 6,255 European or worldwide individuals. Irish ancestry They found that Travellers are of Irish ancestral origin but have significant differences in their genetic make-up compared with the settled community. These differences have arisen because of hundreds of years of isolation combined with a decreasing Traveller population, the researchers say. The findings confirm that the Irish Traveller population has an Irish ancestry and this comes at a time where the ethnicity of Travellers is being considered by the Irish State. The team estimates the group began to separate from the settled population at least 360 years ago. Their findings dispute the theory that Travellers were displaced by the Great Famine, which struck Ireland in 1845. It is exciting to find that the Irish Travellers have been genetically isolated for such a considerable time. They hold great potential for understanding common diseases, not just within their own community but also more generally. I hope very much that further funding will allow us to study the genetics of the Travellers in more detail. Tight community There are estimated to be up to 40,000 Travellers living in Ireland, which represents less than one per cent of the population. Little is known about the group's heritage and there is scant documentary evidence of their history. The study is published in the journal Scientific Reports.
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Post by Admin on Apr 19, 2022 18:56:06 GMT
Genomic insights into the population structure and history of the Irish Travellers Edmund Gilbert, Shai Carmi, Sean Ennis, James F. Wilson & Gianpiero L. Cavalleri Scientific Reports volume 7, Article number: 42187 (2017)
Abstract The Irish Travellers are a population with a history of nomadism; consanguineous unions are common and they are socially isolated from the surrounding, ‘settled’ Irish people. Low-resolution genetic analysis suggests a common Irish origin between the settled and the Traveller populations. What is not known, however, is the extent of population structure within the Irish Travellers, the time of divergence from the general Irish population, or the extent of autozygosity. Using a sample of 50 Irish Travellers, 143 European Roma, 2232 settled Irish, 2039 British and 6255 European or world-wide individuals, we demonstrate evidence for population substructure within the Irish Traveller population, and estimate a time of divergence before the Great Famine of 1845–1852. We quantify the high levels of autozygosity, which are comparable to levels previously described in Orcadian 1st/2nd cousin offspring, and finally show the Irish Traveller population has no particular genetic links to the European Roma. The levels of autozygosity and distinct Irish origins have implications for disease mapping within Ireland, while the population structure and divergence inform on social history.
Introduction The Irish Travellers are a community within Ireland, consisting of between 29,000–40,000 individuals, representing 0.6% of the Irish population as a whole1. They are traditionally nomadic, moving around rural Ireland and providing seasonal labour, as well as participating in horse-trading and tin-smithing2. Since the 1950’s the need for such traditional services has declined3, and the population has become increasingly urban, with the majority living within a fixed abode1. Despite this change in lifestyle, the Traveller community remains tight-knit but also socially isolated. The population has its own language4, known as Shelta, of which Cant and Gammon are dialects.
There is a lack of documentary evidence informing on the history of the Irish Traveller population5,6. As a result, their origins are a source of considerable debate, with no single origin explanation being widely accepted. It has been suggested that the Irish Travellers are a hybrid population between settled Irish and Romani gypsies, due to the similarities in their nomadic lifestyle. Other, “Irish Origin”, hypothesised sources of the Irish Travellers include; displacement from times of famine (such as between 1740–1741, or the Great Famine of 1845–1852), or displacement from the time of Cromwellian (1649–53) or the Anglo-Norman conquests (1169 to 1240). The Irish Traveller population may even pre-date these events, and represent Celtic or pre-Celtic isolates4. These models of ethnogenesis are not necessarily mutually exclusive, and the Irish Traveller population may have multiple sources of origin with a shared culture.
Consanguineous marriages are common within the Irish Traveller community7,8. Small, isolated and endogamous populations such as the Travellers are also more prone to the effects of genetic drift. The isolation and consanguinity have in turn led to an increased prevalence of recessive diseases7,9,10, with higher incidences of diseases such as transferase-deficient galactosaemia11,12, and Hurler syndrome13 observed in the Traveller population relative to the settled Irish. However, the extent of autozygosity within the population has yet to be quantified; as a result it is unknown how homozygous the population is compared to other, better-studied, isolated European populations.
Previous work into the genetics of the Irish Traveller population has been conducted on datasets of relatively low genetic resolution. A recent study used blood groups to investigate the population history of the Irish Travellers2. Multivariate analysis of genotype data across 12 red blood cell loci in 119 Irish Travellers suggested that the population clustered closely with the settled Irish to the exclusion of the Roma. They did, however, appear divergent from the settled Irish. The authors attributed the source of such divergence to genetic drift - but were unable to determine whether any such drift was due to a founder effect, or sustained endogamy. Studies of Mendelian diseases suggest that pathogenic mutations in the settled Irish population are often the same as those observed in the Traveller population such is the case for tranferase-deficient galactosaemia (Q118R in the GALT gene11) and Hurlers Syndrome (W402X, in the α-l-iduronidase gene13).
Using dense, genome-wide, SNP datasets which provide much greater resolution than genetic systems studied in the Travellers to date, we set out to i) describe the genetic structure within the Traveller population, ii) the relationship between the Irish Travellers and other European populations, iii) estimate the time of divergence between the Travellers and settled Irish, and iv) the levels of autozygosity within the Irish Traveller population.
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Post by Admin on Apr 19, 2022 20:35:00 GMT
Results Population Structure of the Irish Travellers In order to investigate the genetic relationship between the Irish Travellers and neighbouring populations we performed fineStructure analysis on Irish Travellers, settled Irish from a subset of the Trinity Student dataset14, and British from a subset of the POBI dataset15. A subset of the datasets were used in this analysis as we were primarily interested in the placing of the Irish Travellers within the context of Britain and Ireland, not the full structure found within Britain and Ireland. The results are presented in Fig. 1 in the form of a principal component analysis of fineStructure’s haplotype-based co-ancestry matrix (1A) and a dendrogram of the fineStructure clusters (1B). Figure 1: Clustering of 34 Irish Travellers, 300 Settled Irish, and 828 British by fineStructure. (A) The first and second components of principal component analysis of the haplotype-based co-ancestry matrix produced by fineStructure analysis. Individual clusters are indicated by colour and shape. Individual Irish Travellers are indicated with black bordered shapes, with cluster shown in Legend. (B) The full fineStructure tree with the highest posterior probability, with cluster size and name, and broad branches shown. We observe that 31 of 34 of the Irish Travellers cluster on the Irish branch, indicating a strong affinity with an Irish population ancestral to the current day “Traveller” and “settled” populations (Fig. 1B). One “Irish Traveller” is found within the Borders 1 cluster, and two are found within the Borders 2 cluster. These three individuals report full, or partial, English gypsie ancestry, a distinct and separate travelling population in Britain. One individual is found within the Ireland 1 cluster, and two are found within the Ireland 2 cluster. Traveller individuals within the Ireland 2 cluster report recent settled ancestry, and we have no such genealogical data on the individual grouped within the Ireland 1 cluster. Given their mixed ancestry, these individuals were excluded from subsequent Fst, f3, and divergence estimate work. The remaining 28 Irish Travellers in the fineStructure analysis were arranged into four clusters. These clusters were grouped on two separate branches (Fig. 1B), with Traveller 1 (n = 7) and Traveller 2 (n = 5) on the same branch, and Traveller 3 (n = 5) and Traveller 4 (n = 11) on a separate branch. The branch with clusters Traveller 3 and 4, forms an outgroup to the rest of the settled Irish and Irish Traveller clusters. These two branches of Irish Traveller clusters align closely with the split of Irish Travellers observed through PCA (Fig. S1). All the individuals who separate on the first principal component (henceforth “PCA group B”) are found in clusters Traveller 3 and 4 (Fig. S2A), and nearly all the individuals who remain grouped with the settled Irish on principle component 1 (henceforth “PCA group A”) are found in clusters Traveller 1 and 2 (Fig. S2A). The remaining PCA group A individuals are those Irish Travellers found in the aforementioned settled Irish or British clusters. This pattern is also repeated in the PCA (Fig. 1A), where members of Traveller 1 and 2 cluster with the settled Irish, where Traveller 3 and 4 individuals cluster separately. Having identified distinct genetic groups of Irish Travellers, we investigated the correlation with Irish Traveller sociolinguistic features, specifically Shelta dialect, and Rathkeale residence (Fig. S2B,C, respectively). The majority of the Gammon speakers were members of clusters Traveller 1 and 2. All of Traveller 1 consisted of Gammon speakers. The majority of clusters Traveller 3 and 4 consisted of Cant speakers, where all but one individual, for whom language identity is unknown, of Traveller 4 were Cant speakers. We found that only clusters Traveller 1 and 2 contain any Rathkeale Travellers, where 4 out of 5 individuals in Traveller 2 are Rathkeale Travellers.
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Post by Admin on Apr 19, 2022 21:58:20 GMT
We next investigated population structure using the maximum-likelihood estimation of individual ancestries using ADMIXTURE (Figs 2 and S3). For this analysis we used a subset of the European Multiple Sclerosis dataset consisting of three northern European (Norway, Finland and Germany), two southern European (Italy and Spain), and a neighbouring population (France). We categorised the POBI British as English, Scottish, Welsh, and Orcadian. We further separated out the Irish Travellers to those in PCA group A and those in PCA group B. Figure 2: Ancestry profiles of the Irish Travellers, and neighbouring European populations by ADMIXTURE. Shown are the ancestry components per individual for the two groups of Irish Travellers (Group A and Group B), settled Irish, British, and European populations; modelling for 4 to 6 ancestral populations. At k = 4–6 (Fig. 2), we observe the well-described north-south divide in the European populations (k = 4), as well as Finland and Orkney (k = 5) differentiating due to their respective populations’ bottleneck and isolation. Although at lower values of k the Irish Travellers generally resemble the settled Irish profile (Fig. S3), at higher values of k two components are found to be enriched within the population. Each of these components is enriched in one of the two Irish Traveller PCA groups. Individuals with more than 20% of the “red” component when k = 5 belong to PCA group B and individuals with near 100% of “blue” component all belong to PCA group A (Fig. 2). The fact that even at k = 3 PCA group B gains its own ancestral component (Fig. S3) suggests strong group-specific genetic drift.
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