scholarly journals Significant East Asian affinity of Chinese Hui genomic structure suggesting their predominant cultural diffusion model in the genetic formation process

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yan Liu ◽  
Junbao Yang ◽  
Yingxiang Li ◽  
Renkuan Tang ◽  
Didi Yuan ◽  
...  

AbstractAncestral origin and genomic history of Chinese Hui people remain to be explored due to the paucity of genome-wide data. Some evidence argued that an eastward migration of Central Asian given rise to modern Hui people, which was inferred as the demic diffusion hypothesis, and others favored the cultural diffusion hypothesis that posited indigenous East Asian adopted Muslim-like culture and formed the modern culturally different populations. However, the extent to which the observed Hui’s genetic structure was mediated by the movement of people or the assimilation of Muslim culture also remains one of the most contentious puzzles. Analyses of over 700K SNPs in 109 western Chinese individuals (49 Sichuan Hui and 60 geographically close Nanchong Han) together with the available ancient and modern Eurasians allowed us to fully explore the genomic makeup and origin of Huis and neighboring Hans. The results of the traditional and formal admixture-statistics (PCA, ADMIXTURE, and allele-sharing-based f-statistics) illuminated a strong genomic affinity between Sichuan Hui and Neolithic-to-modern Northern East Asians, which suggested massive gene influx from East Asian into Sichuan Hui people. Three-way admixture models in the qpWave/qpAdm analyses further revealed a small stream of gene influx from western Eurasian related to French or Andronovo into these Hui people, which was further directly confirmed via the admixture event from the temporally different western sources to Hui people in the qpGraph-based phylogenetic model, suggesting the key role of cultural diffusion model in the genetic formation of the modern East Asian Hui. ALDER-based admixture date estimation showed that this observed western Eurasian admixture signal was introduced into East Asian Hui during the historic periods, concordant with the extensive western-eastern communication in the Silk Road and historically documented Hui’s migration history. Summarily, although significant cultural differentiation among Hui and their neighbors existed, our genomic analysis showed their strong affinity with modern and ancient Northern East Asians. Our results supported that modern Chinese Hui arose from the mixture of minor western Eurasian ancestry and predominantly East Asian ancestry.

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yan Liu ◽  
Junbao Yang ◽  
Yingxiang Li ◽  
Renkuan Tang ◽  
Didi Yuan ◽  
...  

The ancestral origin and genomic history of Chinese Hui people remain to be explored due to the paucity of genome-wide data. Some evidence argues that an eastward migration of Central Asians gave rise to modern Hui people, which is referred to as the demic diffusion hypothesis; other evidence favors the cultural diffusion hypothesis, which posits that East Asians adopted Muslim culture to form the modern culturally distinct populations. However, the extent to which the observed genetic structure of the Huis was mediated by the movement of people or the assimilation of Muslim culture also remains highly contentious. Analyses of over 700 K SNPs in 109 western Chinese individuals (49 Sichuan Huis and 60 geographically close Nanchong Hans) together with the available ancient and modern Eurasian sequences allowed us to fully explore the genomic makeup and origin of Hui and neighboring Han populations. The results from PCA, ADMIXTURE, and allele-sharing-based f-statistics revealed a strong genomic affinity between Sichuan Huis and Neolithic-to-modern Northern East Asians, which suggested a massive gene influx from East Asians into the Sichuan Hui people. Three-way admixture models in the qpWave/qpAdm analyses further revealed a small stream of gene influx from western Eurasians into the Sichuan Hui people, which was further directly confirmed via the admixture event from the temporally distinct Western sources to Sichuan Hui people in the qpGraph-based phylogenetic model, suggesting the key role of the cultural diffusion model in the genetic formation of the Sichuan Huis. ALDER-based admixture date estimation showed that this observed western Eurasian admixture signal was introduced into the Sichuan Huis during the historic periods, which was concordant with the extensive western–eastern communication along the Silk Road and historically documented Huis' migration history. In summary, although significant cultural differentiation exists between Hui people and their neighbors, our genomic analysis showed their strong genetic affinity with modern and ancient Northern East Asians. Our results support the hypothesis that the Sichuan Huis arose from a mixture of minor western Eurasian ancestry and predominant East Asian ancestry.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qiyan Wang ◽  
Jing Zhao ◽  
Zheng Ren ◽  
Jin Sun ◽  
Guanglin He ◽  
...  

The origin and diversification of Muslim Hui people in China via demic or simple cultural diffusion is a long-going debate. We here generated genome-wide data at nearly 700,000 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) from 45 Hui and 14 Han Chinese individuals collected from Guizhou province in southwest China. We applied principal component analysis (PCA), ADMIXTURE, f-statistics, qpWave, and qpAdm analysis to infer the population genetic structure and admixture history. Our results revealed the Guizhou Hui people have a limited amount of West Eurasian related ancestry at a proportion of 6%, but show massive genetic assimilation with indigenous southern Han Chinese and Tibetan or Tungusic/Mongolic related northern East Asians. We also detected a high frequency of North Asia or Central Asia related paternal Y-chromosome but not maternal mtDNA lineages in Guizhou Hui. Our observation supports the cultural diffusion has played a vital role in the formation of Hui people and the migration of Hui people to southwest China was probably a sex-biased male-driven process.


BMC Biology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Debashree Tagore ◽  
Farhang Aghakhanian ◽  
Rakesh Naidu ◽  
Maude E. Phipps ◽  
Analabha Basu

Abstract Background The demographic history of South and Southeast Asia (S&SEA) is complex and contentious, with multiple waves of human migration. Some of the earliest footfalls were of the ancestors of modern Austroasiatic (AA) language speakers. Understanding the history of the AA language family, comprising of over 150 languages and their speakers distributed across broad geographical region in isolated small populations of various sizes, can help shed light on the peopling of S&SEA. Here we investigated the genetic relatedness of two AA groups, their relationship with other ethno-linguistically distinct populations, and the relationship of these groups with ancient genomes of individuals living in S&SEA at different time periods, to infer about the demographic history of this region. Results We analyzed 1451 extant genomes, 189 AAs from India and Malaysia, and 43 ancient genomes from S&SEA. Population structure analysis reveals neither language nor geography appropriately correlates with genetic diversity. The inconsistency between “language and genetics” or “geography and genetics” can largely be attributed to ancient admixture with East Asian populations. We estimated a pre-Neolithic origin of AA language speakers, with shared ancestry between Indian and Malaysian populations until about 470 generations ago, contesting the existing model of Neolithic expansion of the AA culture. We observed a spatio-temporal transition in the genetic ancestry of SEA with genetic contribution from East Asia significantly increasing in the post-Neolithic period. Conclusion Our study shows that contrary to assumptions in many previous studies and despite having linguistic commonality, Indian AAs have a distinct genomic structure compared to Malaysian AAs. This linguistic-genetic discordance is reflective of the complex history of population migration and admixture shaping the genomic landscape of S&SEA. We postulate that pre-Neolithic ancestors of today’s AAs were widespread in S&SEA, and the fragmentation and dissipation of the population have largely been a resultant of multiple migrations of East Asian farmers during the Neolithic period. It also highlights the resilience of AAs in continuing to speak their language in spite of checkered population distribution and possible dominance from other linguistic groups.


2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lara R. Arauna ◽  
Jacob Bergstedt ◽  
Jeremy Choin ◽  
Javier Mendoza-Revilla ◽  
Christine Harmant ◽  
...  

The Vanuatu archipelago served as a gateway to Remote Oceania during one of the most extensive human migrations to uninhabited lands around 3,200 years ago. Ancient DNA studies suggest an initial settlement by East Asian-related peoples that was quickly followed by the arrival of Papuan-related populations, leading to a major population turnover. Yet, there is uncertainty over the population processes and the sociocultural factors that have shaped the genomic diversity of ni-Vanuatu, who present nowadays among the world's highest linguistic and cultural diversity. Here, we report genome-wide data for 1,433 contemporary ni-Vanuatu from 29 different islands, including 287 couples. We find that ni-Vanuatu derive their East Asian- and Papuan-related ancestry from the same source populations and descend from relatively synchronous admixture events that occurred around 1,700-2,300 years ago, indicating a peopling history common to all the archipelago. However, our analyses reveal that the Papuan population turnover was geographically uneven, and that the genetic contribution of Papuan-related peoples was male-biased. Furthermore, we detect Polynesian ancestry arriving around 600-1,000 years ago to South Vanuatu, and map its distribution to both Polynesian- and non-Polynesian-speaking islands. Lastly, we provide evidence for a tendency of spouses to carry similar genetic ancestry, when accounting for relatedness avoidance. The signal is not driven by strong genetic effects of specific loci or trait-associated variants, suggesting that it results instead from social assortative mating. Altogether, our findings provide insight into both the genetic history of ni-Vanuatu populations and how sociocultural processes have shaped the diversity of their genomes.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (13) ◽  
pp. eabe4414
Author(s):  
Guido Alberto Gnecchi-Ruscone ◽  
Elmira Khussainova ◽  
Nurzhibek Kahbatkyzy ◽  
Lyazzat Musralina ◽  
Maria A. Spyrou ◽  
...  

The Scythians were a multitude of horse-warrior nomad cultures dwelling in the Eurasian steppe during the first millennium BCE. Because of the lack of first-hand written records, little is known about the origins and relations among the different cultures. To address these questions, we produced genome-wide data for 111 ancient individuals retrieved from 39 archaeological sites from the first millennia BCE and CE across the Central Asian Steppe. We uncovered major admixture events in the Late Bronze Age forming the genetic substratum for two main Iron Age gene-pools emerging around the Altai and the Urals respectively. Their demise was mirrored by new genetic turnovers, linked to the spread of the eastern nomad empires in the first centuries CE. Compared to the high genetic heterogeneity of the past, the homogenization of the present-day Kazakhs gene pool is notable, likely a result of 400 years of strict exogamous social rules.


Minerals ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 74
Author(s):  
Jinjin Chen ◽  
Yilan Liu ◽  
Patrick Diep ◽  
Radhakrishnan Mahadevan

Acidithiobacillus ferridurans JAGS is a newly isolated acidophile from an acid mine drainage (AMD). The genome of isolate JAGS was sequenced and compared with eight other published genomes of Acidithiobacillus. The pairwise mutation distance (Mash) and average nucleotide identity (ANI) revealed that isolate JAGS had a close evolutionary relationship with A. ferridurans JCM18981, but whole-genome alignment showed that it had higher similarity in genomic structure with A. ferrooxidans species. Pan-genome analysis revealed that nine genomes were comprised of 4601 protein coding sequences, of which 43% were core genes (1982) and 23% were unique genes (1064). A. ferridurans species had more unique genes (205–246) than A. ferrooxidans species (21–234). Functional gene categorizations showed that A. ferridurans strains had a higher portion of genes involved in energy production and conversion while A. ferrooxidans had more for inorganic ion transport and metabolism. A high abundance of kdp, mer and ars genes, as well as mobile genetic elements, was found in isolate JAGS, which might contribute to its resistance to harsh environments. These findings expand our understanding of the evolutionary adaptation of Acidithiobacillus and indicate that A. ferridurans JAGS is a promising candidate for biomining and AMD biotreatment applications.


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