Impact of Religious Inbreeding on the Genetic Structure of the Subpopulations Versus Villages from Lebanon

With 18 different endogamous religious communities in Lebanon and increased habits of consanguineous marriages in its rural villages, it becomes essential to understand the Lebanese genetic structure and its impact on the evaluation of DNA evidence in both civil and criminal cases. In this study, a total of 1387 samples from seven different subpopulations and a total of 496 samples from six different Lebanese villages, distributed over different geographical districts and known to have high rates of endogamy and consanguinity, were analyzed to examine the population structure and the genetic evidence of inbreeding. The obtained results support the inclusion of these parameters upon the assessment of DNA evidence for human identification.