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ARTIC LE IN PRESS Article in Press Unveiling the genetic tapestry of Kohistan: a population genetic analysis of autosomal STRs in a South Asian population BMC Genomics Received: 21 January 2025 Accepted: 6 February 2026 Cite this article as: Adnan A., Rakha A., Chen H.D. et al. Unveiling the genetic tapestry of Kohistan: a population genetic analysis of autosomal STRs in a South Asian population. BMC Genomics (2026). https://doi.org/10.1186/ s12864-026-12641-x Atif Adnan, Allah Rakha, Hao Dong Chen, Muhammad Ilyas, Muhammad Farhat Ullah, Shahid Nazir, Chuan Chao Wang & Hongbo Wang We are providing an unedited version of this manuscript to give early access to its findings. Before final publication, the manuscript will undergo further editing. Please note there may be errors present which affect the content, and all legal disclaimers apply. If this paper is publishing under a Transparent Peer Review model then Peer Review reports will publish with the final article. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12864-026-12641-x © The Author(s) 2026. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Unveiling the Genetic Tapestry of Kohistan: A Population Genetic Analysis of Autosomal STRs in a South Asian Population Atif Adnan1,2 *, Allah Rakha3, Hao Dong Chen4, Muhammad Ilyas5, Muhammad Farhat Ullah6, Shahid Nazir3, Chuan Chao Wang4,7,8* and Hongbo Wang 9,10* 1. School of Medical Science, Shandong Xiehe University, Jinan, Shandong Province 250109, China. 2. Department of Chemistry and Forensic Science, College of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond, Kentucky, 40475, USA. 3. Department of Forensic Sciences, University of Health Sciences, Lahore, 54600, Punjab, Pakistan. 4. Department of Anthropology and Ethnology, Institute of Anthropology, School of Sociology and Anthropology, Xiamen University, Xiamen, Fujian Province 361000, China 5. Center for OMIC Sciences, Islamia Collage University Peshawar, Peshawar, KPK, Pakistan 6. National Centre for Bioinformatics, Quaid-I-Azam University, Islamabad 44000, Pakistan. 7. Ministry of Education Key Laboratory of Contemporary Anthropology, Department of Anthropology and Human Genetics, School of Life Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai 200438, China 8. State Key Laboratory of Genetic Engineering, Center for Evolutionary Biology, School of Life Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai 200438, China 9. Department of Human Anatomy, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Shenyang Medical College. Shenyang, 110034, Liaoning Province China. 10. Liaoning Province Key Laboratory for Phenomics of Human Ethnic Specificity and Critical Illness, Shenyang Medical College, Shenyang, Liaoning Province, China. *Correspondence Atif Adnan (mirzaatifadnan@gmail.com) Chuan Chao Wang (chuanchaowang@fudan.edu.cn) ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT ARTIC LE IN PR ES S ARTICLE IN PRESS Hongbo Wang (wanghongbo@symc.edu.cn) ABSTRACT The Kohistani population of northern Pakistan, an understudied group with distinct geographic, ethnic, and cultural characteristics, presents a unique opportunity to explore genetic diversity in South Asia. We analyzed 21 autosomal STR loci in