Genetic characterization of Greek population isolates reveals strong genetic drift at missense and trait-associated variants

Abstract

Isolated populations are emerging as a powerful study design in the search for low frequency and rare variant associations with complex phenotypes. Here we genotype 2,296 samples from two isolated Greek populations, the Pomak villages (HELIC-Pomak) in the North of Greece; and the Mylopotamos villages (HELIC-MANOLIS) on Crete. We compare their genomic characteristics to the general Greek population and establish them as genetic isolates. In the MANOLIS cohort we observe an enrichment of missense variants amongst the variants that have drifted up in frequency by >5 fold. In the Pomak cohort we find novel associations at variants on chr11p15.4 showing large allele frequency increases (from 0.2% in the general Greek population to 4.6% in the isolate) with haematological traits, for example with mean corpuscular volume (rs7116019, p=2.3×10−26). We replicate this association in a second set of Pomak samples (combined p=2.0×10−36). We demonstrate significant power gains in detecting medical trait associations.