The source of genetic diversity in southern Europe has important biomedical implications and it is found that most disease risk alleles from genome-wide association studies follow expected patterns of divergence between Europe and North Africa, with the principal exception of multiple sclerosis.
The genomes of seven North African populations reveal an extraordinarily complex history of migrations, involving at least five ancestral populations, into North Africa, and a gradient of likely autochthonous Maghrebi ancestry that increases from east to west across northern Africa.
It is concluded that many predicted deleterious mutations have evolved as if they were neutral during the expansion out of Africa, but that OOA populations are likely to have a higher mutation load due to increased allele frequencies of nearly neutral variants that are recessive or partially recessive.
The pattern of deleterious alleles as ascertained in genome sequencing data sets is reviewed and whether human populations differ in their predicted burden of deleters — a phenomenon known as mutation load.
The genomes of an Early and End Neolithic dog from Germany demonstrate continuity with each other and predominantly share ancestry with modern European dogs, contradicting a previously suggested Late Neolithic population replacement.
The results suggest that the Angiosperms353 probe set described here is effective for any group of flowering plants and would be useful for phylogenetic studies from the species level to higher-order groups, including the entire angiosperm clade itself.
The findings refine the current understanding of continental migration, identify gene flow and the response to human disease as strong drivers of genome-level population variation, and underscore the scientific imperative for a broader characterization of the genomic diversity of African individuals to understand human ancestry and improve health.
The results show recent genetic stratifications in the Levant are driven by the religious affiliations of the populations within the region, and Levant populations today fall into two main groups: one sharing more genetic characteristics with modern-day Europeans and Central Asians, and the other with closer genetic affinities to other Middle Easterners and Africans.
A comprehensive phylogenomic platform for exploring the angiosperm tree of life, comprising a set of open tools and data based on the 353 nuclear genes targeted by the universal Angiosperms353 sequence capture probes is described.
It is found that North African populations have a significant excess of derived alleles shared with Neandertals, when compared to sub-Saharan Africans, a fact that can be interpreted as a sign of Ne andertal admixture.