THE EFFECT OF ETHNIC AND RACIAL POPULATION SUBSTRUCTURING ON THE ESTIMATION OF MULTILOCUS FIXED-BIN VNTR RFLP GENOTYPE PROBABILITIES

Four East Asian ethnic and four racial VNTR RFLP Southern California d atabases were used to determine the impact of population substructure on fixed-bin genotype probability estimates. Two calculations were use d for population-level probabilities: Stratified sampling, which takes substructuring into account, and pooling, which ignores it. Using 100 0 four-locus genotypes, the relative difference between probabilities calculated with the stratified and the pooled methods did not exceed o ne order of magnitude out of about II orders of magnitude for East-Asi an racial genotypes. Pooled estimates differed from cognate ethnic val ues by less than one order of magnitude out of about six. These findin gs suggest substructuring of races by major ethnic groups does not lea d to large errors. Racial genotype probability variances were on avera ge about twice the ethnic variances. Multi-racial total population pro babilities calculated by the pooled and stratified methods differed by less than one order of magnitude out of five.