title: Genome-wide patterns of population structure and admixture in West Africans and African Americans.
abstract: Quantifying patterns of population structure in Africans and African Americans illuminates the history of human populations and is critical for undertaking medical genomic studies on a global scale. To obtain a fine-scale genome-wide perspective of ancestry, we analyze Affymetrix GeneChip 500K genotype data from African Americans (n = 365) and individuals with ancestry from West Africa (n = 203 from 12 populations) and Europe (n = 400 from 42 countries). We find that population structure within the West African sample reflects primarily language and secondarily geographical distance, echoing the Bantu expansion. Among African Americans, analysis of genomic admixture by a principal component-based approach indicates that the median proportion of European ancestry is 18.5% (25th-75th percentiles: 11.6-27.7%), with very large variation among individuals. In the African-American sample as a whole, few autosomal regions showed exceptionally high or low mean African ancestry, but the X chromosome showed elevated levels of African ancestry, consistent with a sex-biased pattern of gene flow with an excess of European male and African female ancestry. We also find that genomic profiles of individual African Americans afford personalized ancestry reconstructions differentiating ancient vs. recent European and African ancestry. Finally, patterns of genetic similarity among inferred African segments of African-American genomes and genomes of contemporary African populations included in this study suggest African ancestry is most similar to non-Bantu Niger-Kordofanian-speaking populations, consistent with historical documents of the African Diaspora and trans-Atlantic slave trade.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Statistics and Computational Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA.
authors.forename: Katarzyna
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Bryc
authors.forename: Adam
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Auton
authors.forename: Matthew R
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Nelson
authors.forename: Jorge R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Oksenberg
authors.forename: Stephen L
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Hauser
authors.forename: Scott
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Williams
authors.forename: Alain
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Froment
authors.forename: Jean-Marie
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Bodo
authors.forename: Charles
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wambebe
authors.forename: Sarah A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Tishkoff
authors.forename: Carlos D
authors.initials: CD
authors.lastname: Bustamante
mesh_terms: D017954:Africa South of the Sahara; D000354:Africa, Western; D000465:Algorithms; D044383:Black People / Q000235:genetics*; D005006:Ethnicity / Q000235:genetics; D005060:Europe; D005260:Female; D005819:Genetic Markers; D014644:Genetic Variation; D055106:Genome-Wide Association Study / Q000379:methods*; D005843:Geography; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D014481:United States; D001741:Black or African American
chemical_list: D005819:Genetic Markers