By Sean Henahan, Access Excellence

DUBLIN- A team of geneticists here are conducting a study to determine the origins of the Irish people and their relation to other peoples around Europe. By analysing small segments of DNA from Irish people in different parts of the country and comparing them with corresponding DNA segments from people elsewhere around Europe the Dublin investigators hope to provide a DNA fingerprint of Irishness.

Their research may also help determine how much of their descent the Irish may trace from the Celtic settlers who started arriving in Ireland around 600 BC, and how much may instead derive from the previous inhabitants of the island, who first began to arrive there several thousands of years previously, Dr. Dan Bradley, Department of Genetics, Trinity College, Dublin, said in an interview.

Dr. Bradley and his associates are taking blood samples from people in the more remote rural inland areas of Ireland which are historically least prone to racial admixture. They will then analyse certain highly variable repeat sequences of DNA that occur between chromosomal genes and compare them to other population groupa around the world.

The findings of the Irish study will be incorporated into a large multicenter study of different population groups throughout Europe and with a worldwide study being carried out by a team in Stanford University in California, Dr. Bradley said.

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