Inference of human pigmentation from ancient DNA by genotype likelihoods.

ABSTRACT: Light eyes, hair, and skins probably evolved several times as Homo sapiens dispersed from Africa. In areas with lower UV radiation, light pigmentation alleles increased in frequency because of their adaptive advantage and of other contingent factors such as migration and drift. However, the tempo and mode of their spread is not known. Phenotypic inference from ancient DNA is complicated, both because these traits are polygenic and because of low sequence depth. We evaluated the effects of the latter by randomly removing reads in three high-coverage ancient samples, the Paleolithic Ust'-Ishim from Russia, the Mesolithic SF12 from Sweden, and the Neolithic I5077 from current Croatia. We could thus compare three approaches to pigmentation inference, concluding that for suboptimal level

SUBMITTER: Perretti S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12304992 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature