UCL Discovery
UCL home » Library Services » Electronic resources » UCL Discovery

Possible ancestral structure in human populations.

Plagnol, V; Wall, JD; (2006) Possible ancestral structure in human populations. PLoS Genetics , 2 (7) , Article e105. 10.1371/journal.pgen.0020105. Green open access

[thumbnail of 154266.pdf]
Preview
PDF
154266.pdf

Download (773kB)

Abstract

Determining the evolutionary relationships between fossil hominid groups such as Neanderthals and modern humans has been a question of enduring interest in human evolutionary genetics. Here we present a new method for addressing whether archaic human groups contributed to the modern gene pool (called ancient admixture), using the patterns of variation in contemporary human populations. Our method improves on previous work by explicitly accounting for recent population history before performing the analyses. Using sequence data from the Environmental Genome Project, we find strong evidence for ancient admixture in both a European and a West African population (p approximately 10(-7)), with contributions to the modern gene pool of at least 5%. While Neanderthals form an obvious archaic source population candidate in Europe, there is not yet a clear source population candidate in West Africa.

Type: Article
Title: Possible ancestral structure in human populations.
Location: US
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.0020105
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.0020105
Language: English
Additional information: © 2006 Plagnol and Wall. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. PMCID: PMC1523253
Keywords: Animals, Biological Evolution, Fossils, Genetic Markers, Genetic Variation, Genetics, Population, Hominidae, Humans, Linkage Disequilibrium, Models, Statistical, Population Groups
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences > Genetics, Evolution and Environment
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/154266
Downloads since deposit
183Downloads
Download activity - last month
Download activity - last 12 months
Downloads by country - last 12 months

Archive Staff Only

View Item View Item