Genomic insights into population history and biological adaptation in Oceania

Choin, Jeremy; Mendoza-Revilla, Javier; Arauna, Lara R.; Cuadros-Espinoza, Sebastian; Cassar, Olivier; Larena, Maximilian; Min-Shan Ko, Albert; Harmant, Christine; Laurent, Romain; Verdu, Paul; Laval, Guillaume; Boland, Anne; Olaso, Robert; Deleuze, Jean-François; Valentin, Frédérique; Ko, Ying-Chin; Jakobsson, Mattias; Gessain, Antoine; Excoffier, Laurent; Stoneking, Mark; ... (2021). Genomic insights into population history and biological adaptation in Oceania. Nature, 592(7855), pp. 583-589. Springer Nature 10.1038/s41586-021-03236-5

Text s41586-021-03236-5.pdf - Published Version Restricted to registered users only Available under License Publisher holds Copyright. Download (8MB)

The Pacific region is of major importance for addressing questions regarding human dispersals, interactions with archaic hominins and natural selection processes1. However, the demographic and adaptive history of Oceanian populations remains largely uncharacterized. Here we report high-coverage genomes of 317 individuals from 20 populations from the Pacific region. We find that the ancestors of Papuan-related (‘Near Oceanian’) groups underwent a strong bottleneck before the settlement of the region, and separated around 20,000–40,000 years ago. We infer that the East Asian ancestors of Pacific populations may have diverged from Taiwanese Indigenous peoples before the Neolithic expansion, which is thought to have started from Taiwan around 5,000 years ago2–4. Additionally, this dispersal was not followed by an immediate, single admixture event with Near Oceanian populations, but involved recurrent episodes of genetic interactions. Our analyses reveal marked differences in the proportion and nature of Denisovan heritage among Pacific groups, suggesting that independent interbreeding with highly structured archaic populations occurred. Furthermore, whereas introgression of Neanderthal genetic information facilitated the adaptation of modern humans related to multiple phenotypes (for example, metabolism, pigmentation and neuronal development), Denisovan introgression was primarily beneficial for immune-related functions. Finally, we report evidence of selective sweeps and polygenic adaptation associated with pathogen exposure and lipid metabolism in the Pacific region, increasing our understanding of the mechanisms of biological adaptation to island environments.

Interest & Impact

Downloads

2 since deposited on 12 Nov 2021
0 in the past 12 months

Citations

5 Citations in Web of Science ®
6 Citations in Scopus

Search

in Google Scholar™

Services

Actions (login required)

Edit item

Actions (login required)

Edit item