On the Issue of the Migration History of Italians of the Crimea. A Study Involving Genetic and Quasi-Genetic Markers

This article presents the results of a comprehensive anthropogenetic analysis of a group of modern “Italians of Crimea,” who are descendants of Italian migrants from the Apennine Peninsula between the late 18th and early 20th centuries. The genetic study is based on the analysis of the prevalence of genotypes and alleles of six autosomal polymorphic genes (PAH, TH01, NOS3, SLC6A3, CCR5 and ACE) in Italians of Crimea. According to the data of five markers, the descendants of Italians are closer to European populations and closest to Russian populations, which indicates the degree of miscegenation of this group and a high level of heterozygosity. According to the calculated distances for PAH and TH01, they gravitate towards the historical ancestral population of Italians of Italy, but it is not possible to determine the territorial origin from these markers. Therefore, we attempted to analyse the surnames of the Italians of Crimea and their ancestors as reliable quasigenetic markers. The results revealed that the majority of migrants (52.53 %) were of northern origin, 27.72 % of migrants originated from the southern regions of the Apennine Peninsula, and 19.75 % originated from the central region of Italy. The transformations that the original surnames of Italian migrants underwent over time reflect the complex process of adaptation of Italian groups in the Black Sea-Azov region. The results of this comprehensive study add to the knowledge of the ethnic genomics of Italians