Reply to letter from Felice L. Bedford and Doron Yacobi

Abstract

be pushed back earlier. For T2e1b, they are the first to report its presence in Portugal. This suggests that, should the joint appearance in both Sephardim and Ashkenazim be due to a recent admixture, the direction of gene flow is more likely to have proceeded from Sepherad to Ashkenazi rather than the reverse. This was an issue concerning a recent admixture between the Jewish groups that was previously left unresolved. 2 Finally and curiously, our perusal of the eight coding-region mutations described in the text of the article (Haplogroups HV0, N1, T2b, T2e, and U2) finds seven of eight of them to be nonsynonymous mutations, therefore altering the proteins manufactured from the DNA code and RNA translation. If the authors could clarify whether this is a coincidence, a notable finding, or reflects a special clinical population of subjects, it would be helpful for evaluating the representativeness of their results for Sephardim in Northeast Portugal and elsewhere.