Pulse Brain · Growing Health Evidence Index
Peer-reviewed

The selection landscape and genetic legacy of ancient Eurasians

Evan K. Irving-Pease, Alba Refoyo-Martínez, William Barrie, Andrés Ingason, Alice Pearson, Anders Fischer, Karl-Göran Sjögren, Alma Halgren, Ruairidh Macleod, Fabrice Demeter, Rasmus Amund Henriksen, Tharsika Vimala, Hugh McColl, Andrew H. Vaughn, Leo Speidel, Aaron J. Stern, Gabriele Scorrano, Abigail Ramsøe, Andrew J. Schork, Anders Rosengren, Lei Zhao, Kristian Kristiansen, Astrid K. N. Iversen, Lars Fugger, Peter H. Sudmant, Daniel J. Lawson, Richard Durbin, Thorfinn Sand Korneliussen, Thomas Werge, Morten E. Allentoft, Martin Sikora, Rasmus Nielsen, Fernando Racimo, Eske Willerslev

Nature · 2024

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Summary

, we modelled the selection landscape during the transition from hunting and gathering, to farming and pastoralism across West Eurasia. We identify key selection signals related to metabolism, including that selection at the FADS cluster began earlier than previously reported and that selection near the LCT locus predates the emergence of the lactase persistence allele by thousands of years. We also find strong selection in the HLA region, possibly due to increased exposure to pathogens during the Bronze Age. Using ancient individuals to infer local ancestry tracts in over 400,000 samples from the UK Biobank, we identify widespread differences in the distribution of Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age ancestries across Eurasia. By calculating ancestry-specific polygenic risk scores, we sh

Source type
Peer-reviewed study
DOI
10.1038/s41586-023-06705-1
Catalogue ID
SNmoj44c30-qvpwzf
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