Genomic evidence for shared common ancestry of East African hunting-gathering populations and insights into local adaptation.

ABSTRACT: Anatomically modern humans arose in Africa ∼300,000 years ago, but the demographic and adaptive histories of African populations are not well-characterized. Here, we have generated a genome-wide dataset from 840 Africans, residing in western, eastern, southern, and northern Africa, belonging to 50 ethnicities, and speaking languages belonging to four language families. In addition to agriculturalists and pastoralists, our study includes 16 populations that practice, or until recently have practiced, a hunting-gathering (HG) lifestyle. We observe that genetic structure in Africa is broadly correlated not only with geography, but to a lesser extent, with linguistic affiliation and subsistence strategy. Four East African HG (EHG) populations that are geographically distant from each other sho

SUBMITTER: Scheinfeldt LB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6410815 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature