Genetic ancestry in normal breast tissue donors from the Susan G. Komen tissue bank at the IU Simon Cancer Center (KTB).

e13065Background: When studying complex diseases with a heritable component, such as breast cancer, chances of finding disease susceptibility genes can be increased by accounting for genetic ancestry within the population investigated. The limitation in using self-reported race to reveal population genetic substructure has been extensively reported. Therefore, we employed a panel of genetic polymorphisms, or Ancestry Informative Markers (AIMs), to genetically determine the racial and ethnic background of the tissue donors in the KTB, the only existing biobank of breast tissue cores taken from healthy women. Methods: 4112 women donated breast tissue between 2006 and 2016, and also provided race and ethnicity information. We used a panel of 41 AIMs to estimate genetic ancestry and to maximize the difference between European/ Middle East (Caucasian, C), East Asia and Central/South Asia (Asian), African, and Hispanic populations. We employed the Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method implemented in t...