Genomic insights into population history and biological adaptation in Oceania.

The Pacific region is of major importance for addressing questions regarding human dispersals, interactions with archaic hominins and natural selection processes1. However, the demographic and adaptive history of Oceanian populations remains largely uncharacterized. Here we report high-coverage genomes of 317 individuals from 20 populations from the Pacific region. We find that the ancestors of Papuan-related ('Near Oceanian') groups underwent a strong bottleneck before the settlement of the region, and separated around 20,000-40,000 years ago. We infer that the East Asian ancestors of Pacific populations may have diverged from Taiwanese Indigenous peoples before the Neolithic expansion, which is thought to have started from Taiwan around 5,000 years ago2-4. Additionally, this dispersal was not followed by an immediate, single admixture event with Near Oceanian populations, but involved recurrent episodes of genetic interactions. Our analyses reveal marked differences in the proportion and nature of Denisovan heritage among Pacific groups, suggesting that independent interbreeding with highly structured archaic populations occurred. Furthermore, whereas introgression of Neanderthal genetic information facilitated the adaptation of modern humans related to multiple phenotypes (for example, metabolism, pigmentation and neuronal development), Denisovan introgression was primarily beneficial for immune-related functions. Finally, we report evidence of selective sweeps and polygenic adaptation associated with pathogen exposure and lipid metabolism in the Pacific region, increasing our understanding of the mechanisms of biological adaptation to island environments.

Anthropological genetics perspectives on the transatlantic slave trade.

During the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (TAST), around twelve million Africans were enslaved and forcibly moved from Africa to the Americas and Europe, durably influencing the genetic and cultural landscape of a large part of humanity since the 15th century. Following historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists, population geneticists have, since the 1950's mainly, extensively investigated the genetic diversity of populations on both sides of the Atlantic. These studies shed new lights into the largely unknown genetic origins of numerous enslaved-African descendant communities in the Americas, by inferring their genetic relationships with extant African, European, and Native American populations. Furthermore, exploring genome-wide data with novel statistical and bioinformatics methods, population geneticists have been increasingly able to infer the last 500 years of admixture histories of these populations. These inferences have highlighted the diversity of histories experienced by enslaved-African descendants, and the complex influences of socioeconomic, political, and historical contexts on human genetic diversity patterns during and after the slave trade. Finally, the recent advances of paleogenomics unveiled crucial aspects of the life and health of the first generation of enslaved-Africans in the Americas. Altogether, human population genetics approaches in the genomic and paleogenomic era need to be coupled with history, archaeology, anthropology, and demography in interdisciplinary research, to reconstruct the multifaceted and largely unknown history of the TAST and its influence on human biological and cultural diversities today. Here, we review anthropological genomics studies published over the past 15 years and focusing on the history of enslaved-African descendant populations in the Americas.

A genome scan for genes underlying adult body size differences between Central African hunter-gatherers and farmers.

The evolutionary and biological bases of the Central African "pygmy" phenotype, a characteristic of rainforest hunter-gatherers defined by reduced body size compared with neighboring farmers, remain largely unknown. Here, we perform a joint investigation in Central African hunter-gatherers and farmers of adult standing height, sitting height, leg length, and body mass index (BMI), considering 358 hunter-gatherers and 169 farmers with genotypes for 153,798 SNPs. In addition to reduced standing heights, hunter-gatherers have shorter sitting heights and leg lengths and higher sitting/standing height ratios than farmers and lower BMI for males. Standing height, sitting height, and leg length are strongly correlated with inferred levels of farmer genetic ancestry, whereas BMI is only weakly correlated, perhaps reflecting greater contributions of non-genetic factors to body weight than to height. Single- and multi-marker association tests identify one region and eight genes associated with hunter-gatherer/farmer status, and 24 genes associated with the height-related traits. Many of these genes have putative functions consistent with roles in determining their associated traits and the pygmy phenotype, and they include three associated with standing height in non-Africans (PRKG1, DSCAM, MAGI2). We find evidence that European height-associated SNPs or variants in linkage disequilibrium with them contribute to standing- and sitting-height determination in Central Africans, but not to the differential status of hunter-gatherers and farmers. These findings provide new insights into the biological basis of the pygmy phenotype, and they highlight the potential of cross-population studies for exploring the genetic basis of phenotypes that vary naturally across populations.

Inference on admixture fractions in a mechanistic model of recurrent admixture.

Signatures of recent historical admixture are ubiquitous in human populations. We present a mechanistic model of admixture with two source populations, encompassing recurrent admixture periods and study the distribution of admixture fractions for finite but arbitrary genome size. We provide simulation-based methods to estimate the introgression parameters and discuss the implications of reaching stationarity on estimability of parameters when there are recurrent admixture events with different rates.

Genetic and linguistic histories in Central Asia inferred using approximate Bayesian computations.

Linguistic and genetic data have been widely compared, but the histories underlying these descriptions are rarely jointly inferred. We developed a unique methodological framework for analysing jointly language diversity and genetic polymorphism data, to infer the past history of separation, exchange and admixture events among human populations. This method relies on approximate Bayesian computations that enable the identification of the most probable historical scenario underlying each type of data, and to infer the parameters of these scenarios. For this purpose, we developed a new computer program PopLingSim that simulates the evolution of linguistic diversity, which we coupled with an existing coalescent-based genetic simulation program, to simulate both linguistic and genetic data within a set of populations. Applying this new program to a wide linguistic and genetic dataset of Central Asia, we found several differences between linguistic and genetic histories. In particular, we showed how genetic and linguistic exchanges differed in the past in this area: some cultural exchanges were maintained without genetic exchanges. The methodological framework and the linguistic simulation tool developed here can be used in future work for disentangling complex linguistic and genetic evolutions underlying human biological and cultural histories.

Patterns of admixture and population structure in native populations of Northwest North America.

The initial contact of European populations with indigenous populations of the Americas produced diverse admixture processes across North, Central, and South America. Recent studies have examined the genetic structure of indigenous populations of Latin America and the Caribbean and their admixed descendants, reporting on the genomic impact of the history of admixture with colonizing populations of European and African ancestry. However, relatively little genomic research has been conducted on admixture in indigenous North American populations. In this study, we analyze genomic data at 475,109 single-nucleotide polymorphisms sampled in indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest in British Columbia and Southeast Alaska, populations with a well-documented history of contact with European and Asian traders, fishermen, and contract laborers. We find that the indigenous populations of the Pacific Northwest have higher gene diversity than Latin American indigenous populations. Among the Pacific Northwest populations, interior groups provide more evidence for East Asian admixture, whereas coastal groups have higher levels of European admixture. In contrast with many Latin American indigenous populations, the variance of admixture is high in each of the Pacific Northwest indigenous populations, as expected for recent and ongoing admixture processes. The results reveal some similarities but notable differences between admixture patterns in the Pacific Northwest and those in Latin America, contributing to a more detailed understanding of the genomic consequences of European colonization events throughout the Americas.

Human genetic data reveal contrasting demographic patterns between sedentary and nomadic populations that predate the emergence of farming.

Demographic changes are known to leave footprints on genetic polymorphism. Together with the increased availability of large polymorphism data sets, coalescent-based methods allow inferring the past demography of populations from their present-day patterns of genetic diversity. Here, we analyzed both nuclear (20 noncoding regions) and mitochondrial (HVS-I) resequencing data to infer the demographic history of 66 African and Eurasian human populations presenting contrasting lifestyles (nomadic hunter-gatherers, nomadic herders, and sedentary farmers). This allowed us to investigate the relationship between lifestyle and demography and to address the long-standing debate about the chronology of demographic expansions and the Neolithic transition. In Africa, we inferred expansion events for farmers, but constant population sizes or contraction events for hunter-gatherers. In Eurasia, we inferred higher expansion rates for farmers than herders with HVS-I data, except in Central Asia and Korea. Although isolation and admixture processes could have impacted our demographic inferences, these processes alone seem unlikely to explain the contrasted demographic histories inferred in populations with different lifestyles. The small expansion rates or constant population sizes inferred for herders and hunter-gatherers may thus result from constraints linked to nomadism. However, autosomal data revealed contraction events for two sedentary populations in Eurasia, which may be caused by founder effects. Finally, the inferred expansions likely predated the emergence of agriculture and herding. This suggests that human populations could have started to expand in Paleolithic times, and that strong Paleolithic expansions in some populations may have ultimately favored their shift toward agriculture during the Neolithic.

Sociocultural behavior, sex-biased admixture, and effective population sizes in Central African Pygmies and non-Pygmies.

Sociocultural phenomena, such as exogamy or phylopatry, can largely determine human sex-specific demography. In Central Africa, diverging patterns of sex-specific genetic variation have been observed between mobile hunter-gatherer Pygmies and sedentary agricultural non-Pygmies. However, their sex-specific demography remains largely unknown. Using population genetics and approximate Bayesian computation approaches, we inferred male and female effective population sizes, sex-specific migration, and admixture rates in 23 Central African Pygmy and non-Pygmy populations, genotyped for autosomal, X-linked, Y-linked, and mitochondrial markers. We found much larger effective population sizes and migration rates among non-Pygmy populations than among Pygmies, in agreement with the recent expansions and migrations of non-Pygmies and, conversely, the isolation and stationary demography of Pygmy groups. We found larger effective sizes and migration rates for males than for females for Pygmies, and vice versa for non-Pygmies. Thus, although most Pygmy populations have patrilocal customs, their sex-specific genetic patterns resemble those of matrilocal populations. In fact, our results are consistent with a lower prevalence of polygyny and patrilocality in Pygmies compared with non-Pygmies and a potential female transmission of reproductive success in Pygmies. Finally, Pygmy populations showed variable admixture levels with the non-Pygmies, with often much larger introgression from male than from female lineages. Social discrimination against Pygmies triggering complex movements of spouses in intermarriages can explain these male-biased admixture patterns in a patrilocal context. We show how gender-related sociocultural phenomena can determine highly variable sex-specific demography among populations, and how population genetic approaches contrasting chromosomal types allow inferring detailed human sex-specific demographic history.

A genetic and linguistic analysis of the admixture histories of the islands of Cabo Verde.

From the 15th to the 19th century, the Trans-Atlantic Slave-Trade (TAST) influenced the genetic and cultural diversity of numerous populations. We explore genomic and linguistic data from the nine islands of Cabo Verde, the earliest European colony of the era in Africa, a major Slave-Trade platform between the 16th and 19th centuries, and a previously uninhabited location ideal for investigating early admixture events between Europeans and Africans. Using local-ancestry inference approaches, we find that genetic admixture in Cabo Verde occurred primarily between Iberian and certain Senegambian populations, although forced and voluntary migrations to the archipelago involved numerous other populations. Inter-individual genetic and linguistic variation recapitulates the geographic distribution of individuals' birth-places across Cabo Verdean islands, following an isolation-by-distance model with reduced genetic and linguistic effective dispersals within the archipelago, and suggesting that Kriolu language variants have developed together with genetic divergences at very reduced geographical scales. Furthermore, based on approximate bayesian computation inferences of highly complex admixture histories, we find that admixture occurred early on each island, long before the 18th-century massive TAST deportations triggered by the expansion of the plantation economy in Africa and the Americas, and after this era mostly during the abolition of the TAST and of slavery in European colonial empires. Our results illustrate how shifting socio-cultural relationships between enslaved and non-enslaved communities during and after the TAST, shaped enslaved-African descendants' genomic diversity and structure on both sides of the Atlantic.

Indirect evidence for the genetic determination of short stature in African Pygmies.

Central African Pygmy populations are known to be the shortest human populations worldwide. Many evolutionary hypotheses have been proposed to explain this short stature: adaptation to food limitations, climate, forest density, or high mortality rates. However, such hypotheses are difficult to test given the lack of long-term surveys and demographic data. Whether the short stature observed nowadays in African Pygmy populations as compared to their Non-Pygmy neighbors is determined by genetic factors remains widely unknown. Here, we study a uniquely large new anthropometrical dataset comprising more than 1,000 individuals from 10 Central African Pygmy and neighboring Non-Pygmy populations, categorized as such based on cultural criteria rather than height. We show that climate, or forest density may not play a major role in the difference in adult stature between existing Pygmies and Non-Pygmies, without ruling out the hypothesis that such factors played an important evolutionary role in the past. Furthermore, we analyzed the relationship between stature and neutral genetic variation in a subset of 213 individuals and found that the Pygmy individuals' stature was significantly positively correlated with levels of genetic similarity with the Non-Pygmy gene-pool for both men and women. Overall, we show that a Pygmy individual exhibiting a high level of genetic admixture with the neighboring Non-Pygmies is likely to be taller. These results show for the first time that the major morphological difference in stature found between Central African Pygmy and Non-Pygmy populations is likely determined by genetic factors.

Maternal traces of deep common ancestry and asymmetric gene flow between Pygmy hunter-gatherers and Bantu-speaking farmers.

Two groups of populations with completely different lifestyles-the Pygmy hunter-gatherers and the Bantu-speaking farmers-coexist in Central Africa. We investigated the origins of these two groups and the interactions between them, by analyzing mtDNA variation in 1,404 individuals from 20 farming populations and 9 Pygmy populations from Central Africa, with the aim of shedding light on one of the most fascinating cultural transitions in human evolution (the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture). Our data indicate that this region was colonized gradually, with an initial L1c-rich ancestral population ultimately giving rise to current-day farmers, who display various L1c clades, and to Pygmies, in whom L1c1a is the only surviving clade. Detailed phylogenetic analysis of complete mtDNA sequences for L1c1a showed this clade to be autochthonous to Central Africa, with its most recent branches shared between farmers and Pygmies. Coalescence analyses revealed that these two groups arose through a complex evolutionary process characterized by (i) initial divergence of the ancestors of contemporary Pygmies from an ancestral Central African population no more than approximately 70,000 years ago, (ii) a period of isolation between the two groups, accounting for their phenotypic differences, (iii) long-standing asymmetric maternal gene flow from Pygmies to the ancestors of the farming populations, beginning no more than approximately 40,000 years ago and persisting until a few thousand years ago, and (iv) enrichment of the maternal gene pool of the ancestors of the farming populations by the arrival and/or subsequent demographic expansion of L0a, L2, and L3 carriers.

Complex genetic admixture histories reconstructed with Approximate Bayesian Computation.

Admixture is a fundamental evolutionary process that has influenced genetic patterns in numerous species. Maximum-likelihood approaches based on allele frequencies and linkage-disequilibrium have been extensively used to infer admixture processes from genome-wide data sets, mostly in human populations. Nevertheless, complex admixture histories, beyond one or two pulses of admixture, remain methodologically challenging to reconstruct. We developed an Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) framework to reconstruct highly complex admixture histories from independent genetic markers. We built the software package MetHis to simulate independent SNPs or microsatellites in a two-way admixed population for scenarios with multiple admixture pulses, monotonically decreasing or increasing recurring admixture, or combinations of these scenarios. MetHis allows users to draw model-parameter values from prior distributions set by the user, and, for each simulation, MetHis can calculate numerous summary statistics describing genetic diversity patterns and moments of the distribution of individual admixture fractions. We coupled MetHis with existing machine-learning ABC algorithms and investigated the admixture history of admixed populations. Results showed that random forest ABC scenario-choice could accurately distinguish among most complex admixture scenarios, and errors were mainly found in regions of the parameter space where scenarios were highly nested, and, thus, biologically similar. We focused on African American and Barbadian populations as two study-cases. We found that neural network ABC posterior parameter estimation was accurate and reasonably conservative under complex admixture scenarios. For both admixed populations, we found that monotonically decreasing contributions over time, from Europe and Africa, explained the observed data more accurately than multiple admixture pulses. This approach will allow for reconstructing detailed admixture histories when maximum-likelihood methods are intractable.

Limited dispersal in mobile hunter-gatherer Baka Pygmies.

Hunter-gatherer Pygmies from Central Africa are described as being extremely mobile. Using neutral genetic markers and population genetics theory, we explored the dispersal behaviour of the Baka Pygmies from Cameroon, one of the largest Pygmy populations in Central Africa. We found a strong correlation between genetic and geographical distances: a pattern of isolation by distance arising from limited parent-offspring dispersal. Our study suggests that mobile hunter-gatherers do not necessarily disperse over wide geographical areas.

Can life history trade-offs explain the evolution of short stature in human pygmies? A response to Migliano et al. (2007).

Walker et al. ["Growth rates and life histories in twenty-two small-scale societies," Am. J. Hum. Biol. 18:295-311 (2006)] used life history theory to develop an innovative explanation for human diversity in stature. Short stature could have been selected for in some human populations as a result of the advantage of an earlier growth cessation and earlier reproduction in a context of high mortality. Migliano et al. ["Life history trade-offs explain the evolution of human pygmies," Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 104:20,216-20,219 (2007)] recently published an important article that tested this hypothesis to explain short stature in human pygmy populations. However innovative this work may be, we believe that some of the data and results presented are controversial if not questionable. As problematic points we note (1) the use of an arbitrary threshold of height (155 cm) to categorize populations into pygmies and nonpygmies; (2) the use of demographic data from Philippine pygmy groups that have experienced dramatic cultural and environmental changes in the last 20 years, and (3) the use of demographic data concerning African pygmy groups because good systematic data on these groups are not available. Finally, we report here mathematical errors and loopholes in the optimization model developed by Migliano and colleagues. In this paper we suggest alternative trade-offs that can be used to explain Migliano's results on more reliable bases.

Genomic Evidence for Local Adaptation of Hunter-Gatherers to the African Rainforest.

African rainforests support exceptionally high biodiversity and host the world's largest number of active hunter-gatherers [1-3]. The genetic history of African rainforest hunter-gatherers and neighboring farmers is characterized by an ancient divergence more than 100,000 years ago, together with recent population collapses and expansions, respectively [4-12]. While the demographic past of rainforest hunter-gatherers has been deeply characterized, important aspects of their history of genetic adaptation remain unclear. Here, we investigated how these groups have adapted-through classic selective sweeps, polygenic adaptation, and selection since admixture-to the challenging rainforest environments. To do so, we analyzed a combined dataset of 566 high-coverage exomes, including 266 newly generated exomes, from 14 populations of rainforest hunter-gatherers and farmers, together with 40 newly generated, low-coverage genomes. We find evidence for a strong, shared selective sweep among all hunter-gatherer groups in the regulatory region of TRPS1-primarily involved in morphological traits. We detect strong signals of polygenic adaptation for height and life history traits such as reproductive age; however, the latter appear to result from pervasive pleiotropy of height-associated genes. Furthermore, polygenic adaptation signals for functions related to responses of mast cells to allergens and microbes, the IL-2 signaling pathway, and host interactions with viruses support a history of pathogen-driven selection in the rainforest. Finally, we find that genes involved in heart and bone development and immune responses are enriched in both selection signals and local hunter-gatherer ancestry in admixed populations, suggesting that selection has maintained adaptive variation in the face of recent gene flow from farmers.

The demographic history and mutational load of African hunter-gatherers and farmers.

Understanding how deleterious genetic variation is distributed across human populations is of key importance in evolutionary biology and medical genetics. However, the impact of population size changes and gene flow on the corresponding mutational load remains a controversial topic. Here, we report high-coverage exomes from 300 rainforest hunter-gatherers and farmers of central Africa, whose distinct subsistence strategies are expected to have impacted their demographic pasts. Detailed demographic inference indicates that hunter-gatherers and farmers recently experienced population collapses and expansions, respectively, accompanied by increased gene flow. We show that the distribution of deleterious alleles across these populations is compatible with a similar efficacy of selection to remove deleterious variants with additive effects, and predict with simulations that their present-day additive mutation load is almost identical. For recessive mutations, although an increased load is predicted for hunter-gatherers, this increase has probably been partially counteracted by strong gene flow from expanding farmers. Collectively, our predicted and empirical observations suggest that the impact of the recent population decline of African hunter-gatherers on their mutation load has been modest and more restrained than would be expected under a fully recessive model of dominance.

Exploring Cuba's population structure and demographic history using genome-wide data.

Cuba is the most populated country in the Caribbean and has a rich and heterogeneous genetic heritage. Here, we take advantage of dense genomic data from 860 Cuban individuals to reconstruct the genetic structure and ancestral origins of this population. We found distinct admixture patterns between and within the Cuban provinces. Eastern provinces have higher African and Native American ancestry contributions (average 26% and 10%, respectively) than the rest of the Cuban provinces (average 17% and 5%, respectively). Furthermore, in the Eastern Cuban region, we identified more intense sex-specific admixture patterns, strongly biased towards European male and African/Native American female ancestries. Our subcontinental ancestry analyses in Cuba highlight the Iberian population as the best proxy European source population, South American and Mesoamerican populations as the closest Native American ancestral component, and populations from West Central and Central Africa as the best proxy sources of the African ancestral component. Finally, we found complex admixture processes involving two migration pulses from both Native American and African sources. Most of the inferred Native American admixture events happened early during the Cuban colonial period, whereas the African admixture took place during the slave trade and more recently as a probable result of large-scale migrations from Haiti.

Parallel Trajectories of Genetic and Linguistic Admixture in a Genetically Admixed Creole Population.

Joint analyses of genes and languages, both of which are transmitted in populations by descent with modification-genes vertically by Mendel's laws, language via combinations of vertical, oblique, and horizontal processes [1-4]-provide an informative approach for human evolutionary studies [5-10]. Although gene-language analyses have employed extensive data on individual genetic variation [11-23], their linguistic data have not considered corresponding long-recognized [24] variability in individual speech patterns, or idiolects. Genetically admixed populations that speak creole languages show high genetic and idiolectal variation-genetic variation owing to heterogeneity in ancestry within admixed groups [25, 26] and idiolectal variation owing to recent language formation from differentiated sources [27-31]. To examine cotransmission of genetic and linguistic variation within populations, we collected genetic markers and speech recordings in the admixed creole-speaking population of Cape Verde, whose Kriolu language traces to West African languages and Portuguese [29, 32-35] and whose genetic ancestry has individual variation in European and continental African contributions [36-39]. In parallel with the combined Portuguese and West African origin of Kriolu, we find that genetic admixture in Cape Verde varies on an axis separating Iberian and Senegambian populations. We observe, analogously to vertical genetic transmission, transmission of idiolect from parents to offspring, as idiolect is predicted by parental birthplace, even after controlling for shared parent-child birthplaces. Further, African genetic admixture correlates with an index tabulating idiolectal features with likely African origins. These results suggest that Cape Verdean genetic and linguistic admixture have followed parallel evolutionary trajectories, with cotransmission of genetic and linguistic variation.

Dispersals and genetic adaptation of Bantu-speaking populations in Africa and North America.

Bantu languages are spoken by about 310 million Africans, yet the genetic history of Bantu-speaking populations remains largely unexplored. We generated genomic data for 1318 individuals from 35 populations in western central Africa, where Bantu languages originated. We found that early Bantu speakers first moved southward, through the equatorial rainforest, before spreading toward eastern and southern Africa. We also found that genetic adaptation of Bantu speakers was facilitated by admixture with local populations, particularly for the HLA and LCT loci. Finally, we identified a major contribution of western central African Bantu speakers to the ancestry of African Americans, whose genomes present no strong signals of natural selection. Together, these results highlight the contribution of Bantu-speaking peoples to the complex genetic history of Africans and African Americans.