title: Human adaptation and population differentiation in the light of ancient genomes.
abstract: The influence of positive selection sweeps in human evolution is increasingly debated, although our ability to detect them is hampered by inherent uncertainties in the timing of past events. Ancient genomes provide snapshots of allele frequencies in the past and can help address this question. We combine modern and ancient genomic data in a simple statistic (DAnc) to time allele frequency changes, and investigate the role of drift and adaptation in population differentiation. Only 30% of the most strongly differentiated alleles between Africans and Eurasians changed in frequency during the colonization of Eurasia, but in Europe these alleles are enriched in genic and putatively functional alleles to an extent only compatible with local adaptation. Adaptive alleles--especially those associated with pigmentation--are mostly of hunter-gatherer origin, although lactose persistence arose in a haplotype present in farmers. These results provide evidence for a role of local adaptation in human population differentiation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.
authors.forename: Felix M
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2812-6636
authors.initials: FM
authors.lastname: Key
authors.affiliation: Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.|Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins of Chinese Academy of Sciences, IVPP, CAS, Beijing 100044, China.|Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston 02115, Massachusetts, USA.
authors.forename: Qiaomei
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Fu
authors.affiliation: Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.
authors.forename: Frédéric
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Romagné
authors.affiliation: Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.|Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501, USA.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lachmann
authors.affiliation: Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.
authors.forename: Aida M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Andrés
mesh_terms: D000220:Adaptation, Biological / Q000235:genetics*; D000483:Alleles; D044466:Asian People / Q000235:genetics; D005807:Genes, Overlapping; D005828:Genetics, Population; D015894:Genome, Human; D006239:Haplotypes / Q000235:genetics; D006801:Humans; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide / Q000235:genetics; D044465:White People / Q000235:genetics