Polygenic Patterns of Adaptive Introgression in Modern Humans Are Mainly Shaped by Response to Pathogens

Gouy, Alexandre; Excoffier, Laurent (2020). Polygenic Patterns of Adaptive Introgression in Modern Humans Are Mainly Shaped by Response to Pathogens. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 37(5), pp. 1420-1433. Oxford University Press 10.1093/molbev/msz306

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Anatomically modern humans carry many introgressed variants from other hominins in their genomes. Some of them affect their phenotype and can thus be negatively or positively selected. Several individual genes have been proposed to be the subject of adaptive introgression, but the possibility of polygenic adaptive introgression has not been extensively investigated yet. In this study, we analyze archaic introgressionmaps with refined functional enrichmentmethods to find signals of polygenic adaptation of introgressed variants. We first apply a method to detect sets of connected genes (subnetworks) within biological pathways that present higher-than-expected levels of archaic introgression. We then introduce and apply a new statistical test to distinguish between epistatic and independent selection in gene sets of present-day humans.We identify several known targets of adaptive introgression, and we show that they belong to larger networks of introgressed genes. After correction for genetic linkage, we find that signals of polygenic adaptation are mostly explained by independent and potentially sequential selection episodes. However, we also find some gene sets where introgressed variants present significant signals of epistatic selection. Our results confirm that archaic introgression has facilitated local adaptation, especially in immunity related and metabolic functions and highlight its involvement in a coordinated response to pathogens out of Africa.
Key words: adaptive introgression, polygenic selection, Neandertal, Denisova, immunity.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

08 Faculty of Science > Department of Biology > Institute of Ecology and Evolution (IEE)
08 Faculty of Science > Department of Biology > Institute of Ecology and Evolution (IEE) > Population Genetics

UniBE Contributor:

Gouy, Alexandre Pierre, Excoffier, Laurent

Subjects:

500 Science > 570 Life sciences; biology

ISSN:

0737-4038

Publisher:

Oxford University Press

Language:

English

Submitter:

Susanne Holenstein

Date Deposited:

08 Apr 2020 09:18

Last Modified:

23 Dec 2022 09:43

Publisher DOI:

10.1093/molbev/msz306

BORIS DOI:

10.7892/boris.141697

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/141697

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