Press coverage of ‘Like Sugar in Milk’ (Parsi Saga)
Nearly 2 months ago, our collaborative work on Parsis was out in Genome Biology. It was a grand effort of several institutions. Estonian Biocentre, Estonia; Sanger Institute, UK; CCMB, Hyderabad, India; University of Cambridge UK; Deccan College, India and couple of Institutes from Pakistan.
Unfortunately, during this work the father of Pakistani genome project Prof Syed Q Mehdi passed away :(. His demise was a big loss of not only to Pakistan but also to the South Asia. In his memory, we dedicated this paper to him.
In this paper, we merged genetic data together with the Archaeological data. The work of Dr Veena Mushrif was immense in this project. Dr Niraj Rai, the brilliant aDNA expert from India managed to bag out the mtDNA data from the ancient samples which was quite crucial to draw the conclusion on maternal geneflow.
On the modern DNA, Dr Qasim Ayub, Dr Massimo Mezzavila, Dr Toomas Kivisild and me performed several analyses rigorously. I have summarised the results in an invited blog to Genome Biology. During the whole work, Dr Shernaz Cama was extremely helpful. Each and every community in India needs a dedicated person like her.
After the publication, for the follow-up work, in addition to the above-mentioned institutions, we are now collaborating with the Parzor Foundation and AVESTHAGEN. Niraj will be working further to generate high-quality sequence data from ancient samples.
Below are the coverage from press and blogposts on this article-
The Hindu Business Line: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/variety/how-parsis-with-persian-roots-flowered-in-indian-soil/article9730657.ece First Post: http://www.firstpost.com/india/genetic-study-conducted-in-india-pakistan-confirms-parsis-migrated-to-india-from-persia-3659417.html Daily Pioneer: http://www.dailypioneer.com/nation/parsis-face-existential-crisis-as-population-dwindles-to-57000.html Deccan Chronicle: http://www.deccanchronicle.com/science/science/090617/dna-proves-parsis-link-to-iran.html Times of India: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/study-shows-parsis-migrated-to-india-from-iran/articleshow/59148462.cms Nature Asia: http://www.natureasia.com/en/nindia/article/10.1038/nindia.2017.67 Biovoice News: http://www.biovoicenews.com/genetic-study-confirms-parsi-migration/ News Room 24: https://newsroom24x7.com/2017/06/16/genetic-study-confirms-parsi-migration/ Dainik Jagran: http://minextlive.jagran.com/why-parsi-community-is-deceased-day-by-day-in-india-201706280009 Genome Biology Blog: http://blogs.biomedcentral.com/on-biology/2017/06/21/piecing-together-genetic-histories-of-isolated-populations/ Sanger Institute Blog: https://sangerinstitute.blog/2017/06/29/like-sugar-in-milk-parsi-populations-from-india-and-pakistan/ Deccan Herald: http://www.deccanherald.com/content/620950/tracing-origin-subcontinents-parsi-population.html The Telegraph: https://www.telegraphindia.com/1170616/jsp/nation/story_157125.jsp
Our data had very little overlap (~70K SNPs) with the data published in Broushaki 2016 paper, which was actually containing the Zoroastrian from the Iran. Below are the PCA and fineSTRUCTURE analyses which show the expected results.