A unified genealogy of modern and ancient genomes
The sequencing of modern and ancient genomes from around the world has revolutionized our understanding of human history and evolution. However, the problem of how best to characterize ancestral relationships from the totality of human genomic variation remains unsolved. Here, we address this challe...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Journal article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
American Association for the Advancement of Science
2022
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| Summary: | The sequencing of modern and ancient genomes from around the world has
revolutionized our understanding of human history and evolution. However, the problem of how
best to characterize ancestral relationships from the totality of human genomic variation remains
unsolved. Here, we address this challenge with non-parametric methods that enable us to infer a
unified genealogy of modern and ancient humans. This compact representation of multiple
datasets explores the challenges of missing and erroneous data and uses ancient samples to
constrain and date relationships. We demonstrate the power of the method to recover
relationships between individuals and populations, as well as to identify descendants of ancient
samples. Finally, we introduce a simple non-parametric estimator of ancestor geographical
location that recapitulates key events in human history |
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