Quebec Founder Population
The unique history of the Quebec French-Canadian population makes it among the best founder populations in the world for gene discovery.
A founder population is a group of people who are all descended from a limited number of common ancestors and who have been isolated from intermarriage with outside groups for several generations by means of culture, religion, language, geography or some other factor. Such populations may have high levels of genetic homogeneity making it possible to detect the presence of specific disease genes.
Because of its relatively young age, limited numbers of founders, and very large current size,
the Quebec Founder Population is one of the best populations in the world for use in gene mapping:
- Quebec has optimal linkage disequilibrium (genetic sharing) based on its foundation 12-16 generations ago by only 2,600 effective founders, and its 80 fold growth over the last 230 years, with minimal gene dilution from intermarriage
- Far fewer variations for known disease genes exist in Quebec compared to the general population, making the existing variations easier to find (for several known disease genes that have been studied in Quebec, the number of disease-causing variations was 5 or less, versus 60 to over a thousand in general populations)
- The growth of the Quebec population in relative isolation has maintained high levels of genetic sharing, providing greater power to population genetics methods for disease gene discovery. Today, 68% of the gene pool is derived from the 2,600 founders, making genes more readily detectable.
- At 6 million individuals today, Quebec is the largest useful founder population worldwide, allowing faster patient recruiting, better selection and large cohorts
- The Projet BALSAC and the Université de Montréal's Programme de recherche en démographie historique comprehensively document the genealogy of the vast majority of the Quebec Founder Population from founding to modern times. Access to these databases supports the gene discovery process.