The genetics behind historical socio-demography in Flanders revealed by the human Y-chromosome: an interdisciplinary approach

The male-specific and non-recombining Y-chromosome (chrY) serves as a powerful tool for genetic-genealogy. But, as a chrY-specific sequencing panel did not exist, it has not been linked to a genealogical database yet. During my PhD, I developed the first chrY-specific sequencing panel, the CSYseq, providing a large dataset of 15,813 interesting Y-markers. This CSYseq is useful to determine evolutionary biogeographical ancestry and to identify close paternal kinships. In this postdoctoral project, I aim to reveal the genetics behind historical socio-demography in Flanders through chrY analysis. It is my ambition to provide novel and valuable perspectives across three disciplines: historical demography, evolutionary biology and forensic genetics. I will sequence 450 males linked to the unique socio-demographical COR* database, which is representative for the Flemish population. Through this interdisciplinary genetic-genealogical approach, I will (a) explore surname founder history to gather more perceptions on surname origins, (b) unravel the influence of chrY and demographic variability on offspring gender ratio, and (c) determine human chrY diversity to estimate familial searching success rates. The key deliverable is a genetic-genealogical database, linking a universally exchangeable chrY dataset with extensive socio-demographic data. Overall, this pioneer study will increase the importance of the highly underused chrY for interdisciplinary population research worldwide.