engleski

Holistic Anthropological Research of Hvar Islanders, Croatia: From Parish Registries to DNA Studies in 33 Years

The complexity of interactions between hereditary, environmental and cultural factors in determining human phenotypes is often underestimated in biomedical research. It can be most clearly demonstrated when a well-defined human isolate population is considered and multiple measurements of phenotypes, genetic characteristics and studies of environmental and cultural determinants are performed and analysed. Even in such small communities, where decreased variability in all those factors is presumed, it is often apparent how difficult it is to disentangle the effects of separate interacting factors and explain most of the variance in phenotypes of interest. In this paper, we present 33 years of holistic anthropological research that was being conducted since 1971 in the island of Hvar, Croatia. During this period, detailed characterisation of migrations, demography, isonymy, linguistic differences, anthropometric traits (head and body dimensions), physiological (cardiorespiratory) properties, quantitative and qualitative dermatoglyphic traits, radiogrammetric metacarpal bone dimensions and genetic traits (erythrocyte antigens, HLA diversity, DNA short tandem repeat (STR), mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosome polymorphysms) was performed. The analysis of this large collection of data using both model-bound and model-free approaches showed that the complexity underlying human biological traits may be considerably greater than generally assumed, which has important implications for design of future studies into genetic determinants of complex traits.

humans; phenotypes; genetics; environment; culture; population structure; holistic approach; modelling; anthropology; island of Hvar; Croatia

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