Tracing the route of modern humans out of Africa by using 225 human genome sequences from Ethiopians and Egyptians.

ABSTRACT: The predominantly African origin of all modern human populations is well established, but the route taken out of Africa is still unclear. Two alternative routes, via Egypt and Sinai or across the Bab el Mandeb strait into Arabia, have traditionally been proposed as feasible gateways in light of geographic, paleoclimatic, archaeological, and genetic evidence. Distinguishing among these alternatives has been difficult. We generated 225 whole-genome sequences (225 at 8× depth, of which 8 were increased to 30×; Illumina HiSeq 2000) from six modern Northeast African populations (100 Egyptians and five Ethiopian populations each represented by 25 individuals). West Eurasian components were masked out, and the remaining African haplotypes were compared with a panel of sub-Saharan African and non-

SUBMITTER: Pagani L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4457944 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature