Abstract
BACKGROUND: The Kurds as an ethnic group are believed to be a combination of earlier Indo-European tribes who migrated and inhabited a mountainous area thousands of years ago. However, as it is difficult to describe the precise history of their origin, it is necessary to investigate their population relationship with other geographical and ethnic groups. RESULTS: Seventeen Short Tandem Repeat markers on the Y chromosome (Y-STR) included in the AmpFLSTR™ Yfiler™ PCR Amplification Kit (Thermo Fisher Scientific, USA) were used to type DNA samples from the Sorani (Central) Kurdish population in Sulaymaniyah province. One hundred fifty-seven haplotypes were obtained from 162 unrelated male individuals. The highest and lowest gene diversities were DYS385a/b (GD = 0.848) and DYS392 (GD = 0.392), respectively. The haplotypes were used to predict the most likely haplogroups in the Sulaymaniyah population. CONCLUSION: Haplogroup prediction indicated predominance (28%) of subclade J2 (44/157) in the Sorani Kurds, northeast of Iraq. The pairwise genetic distance results showed that the Kurdish group clustered along with Asian populations, whereas the furthest countries were Europeans and Africans.