Direct detection of natural selection in Bronze Age Britain.

ABSTRACT: We developed a novel method for efficiently estimating time-varying selection coefficients from genome-wide ancient DNA data. In simulations, our method accurately recovers selective trajectories and is robust to misspecification of population size. We applied it to a large data set of ancient and present-day human genomes from Britain and identified seven loci with genome-wide significant evidence of selection in the past 4500 yr. Almost all of them can be related to increased vitamin D or calcium levels, suggesting strong selective pressure on these or related phenotypes. However, the strength of selection on individual loci varied substantially over time, suggesting that cultural or environmental factors moderated the genetic response. Of 28 complex anthropometric and metabolic traits,

SUBMITTER: Mathieson I 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9808619 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Nov-Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature