Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Vietnam exhibits great cultural and linguistic diversity, yet the genetic history of Vietnamese populations remains poorly understood.
Previous studies focused mostly on the majority Kinh group, and thus the genetic diversity of the many other groups has not yet been investigated. We find highly variable levels of diversity within and between groups that do not correlate with either geography or language family.
In particular, the Mang and Sila have undergone recent, independent bottlenecks, while the majority group, Kinh, exhibits low levels of differentiation with other groups. The two Austronesian-speaking groups, Giarai and Ede, show a potential impact of matrilocality on their patterns of variation. Overall, we find that isolation, coupled with limited contact involving some groups, has been the major factor influencing the genetic structure of Vietnamese populations, and that there is substantial genetic diversity that is not represented by the Kinh.
Subject terms: Genetic variation, Genetics, Population genetics, Next-generation sequencing. Vietnam is a multiethnic country that occupies a key position within MSEA and exhibits both geographic and ethnolinguistic diversity.
The northern part of the country consists of highlands and the Red River delta; the central part also comprises highlands, while the southern part encompasses mostly coastal lowlands and the Mekong River delta. There are 54 official ethnicities in Vietnam, and a total of different languages are spoken in the country. These belong to all of the five major language families present in SEA [ 4 ]. Groups speaking AA languages are distributed throughout the country, while those speaking TK, HM, or ST languages historically were found mainly in the north but are now also living in other areas; AN-speaking groups are located in the south part of central Vietnam and the Tay Nguyen highlands.
