IBD Sharing between Africans, Neandertals, and Denisovans.

ABSTRACT: Interbreeding between ancestors of humans and other hominins outside of Africa has been studied intensively, while their common history within Africa still lacks proper attention. However, shedding light on human evolution in this time period about which little is known, is essential for understanding subsequent events outside of Africa. We investigate the genetic relationships of humans, Neandertals, and Denisovans by identifying very short DNA segments in the 1000 Genomes Phase 3 data that these hominins share identical by descent (IBD). By focusing on low frequency and rare variants, we identify very short IBD segments with high confidence. These segments reveal events from a very distant past because shorter IBD segments are presumably older than longer ones. We extracted two types of

SUBMITTER: Povysil G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5381509 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature