Components of the Macedonian Ethnic Identity: Genetic DNA Evidence

Abstract

As indicated in the preface and as explicitly described in chapter 3, there is now an available technology that potentially has the promise of being the gold standard for issues of ethnic identity. The well-established DNA genotyping technology used in linkage studies of single or multiple gene factor involvement in manifestations of various medical disease syndromes and/or developmental abnormalities and, more to the point, the highly focused forensic DNA analysis in restricted regions of the genome are now applied to questions of race and ethnicity. Unfortunately, in most direct investigations of ethnicity linked to disease syndromes, the distinctions between race and ethnicity are blurred; rather, the focus is on large population groups, geographically specified, and it has been suggested that race can be eliminated altogether as a useful term in genetics.