A Genetic Atlas of Human Admixture History
The in-Laws Through History
Admixture, the result of previously distant populations meeting and breeding, leaves a genetic signal within the descendants' genomes. However, over time the signal decays and can be hard to trace. Hellenthal et al. (p. 747) describe a method, using a technique called chromosome painting, to follow the genetic traces of admixture back to the nearest extant population. The approach revealed details of worldwide human admixture history over the past 4000 years.
Abstract
Modern genetic data combined with appropriate statistical methods have the potential to contribute substantially to our understanding of human history. We have developed an approach that exploits the genomic structure of admixed populations to date and characterize historical mixture events at fine scales. We used this to produce an atlas of worldwide human admixture history, constructed by using genetic data alone and encompassing over 100 events occurring over the past 4000 years. We identified events whose dates and participants suggest they describe genetic impacts of the Mongol empire, Arab slave trade, Bantu expansion, first millennium CE migrations in Eastern Europe, and European colonialism, as well as unrecorded events, revealing admixture to be an almost universal force shaping human populations.
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Published In
Science
Volume 343 | Issue 6172
14 February 2014
14 February 2014
Copyright
Copyright © 2014, American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Submission history
Received: 22 July 2013
Accepted: 20 December 2013
Published in print: 14 February 2014
Acknowledgments
We are grateful for the John Fell Fund–University of Oxford, the NIH, the Wellcome Trust (S.M., grant 098387/Z/12/Z), the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, the Royal Society/Wellcome Trust (G.H., grant 098386/Z/12/Z), and the Istituto Italiano di Antropologia for funding. J.F.W. is a director, stockholder, and employee of ScotlandsDNA (and formerly of EthnoAncestry). We thank S. Karachanak, D. Toncheva, P. Anagnostou, F. Cali, F. Brisighelli, V. Romano, G. LeFranc, C. Buresi, J. Ben Chibani, A. Haj-Khelil, S. Denden, R. Ploski, T. Hervig, T. Moen, P. Krajewski, and R. Herrera for providing samples for our genotyping and the blood donors and the staff of the Unità Operativa Complessa di Medicina Trasfusionale, Azienda Ospedaliera Umberto I, Siracusa (Italy). Data analyzed in this study may be downloaded via http://admixturemap.paintmychromosomes.com/. Raw genotype data are available at the Gene Expression Omnibus database online (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/), series accession number GSE53626.
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