Evidence of Polygenic Adaptation to High Altitude from Tibetan and Sherpa Genomes.

ABSTRACT: Although Tibetans and Sherpa present several physiological adjustments evolved to cope with selective pressures imposed by the high-altitude environment, especially hypobaric hypoxia, few selective sweeps at a limited number of hypoxia related genes were confirmed by multiple genomic studies. Nevertheless, variants at these loci were found to be associated only with downregulation of the erythropoietic cascade, which represents an indirect aspect of the considered adaptive phenotype. Accordingly, the genetic basis of Tibetan/Sherpa adaptive traits remains to be fully elucidated, in part due to limitations of selection scans implemented so far and mostly relying on the hard sweep model.In order to overcome this issue, we used whole-genome sequence data and several selection statistics as in

SUBMITTER: Gnecchi-Ruscone GA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6239493 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature