Tag: ancient DNA
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Ancient human DNA: How sequencing the genome of a boy from Ballito Bay changed human history
Carina and Mattias were involved in a commentary article in the South African Journal of Science describing the scientific merits of the genome of a ancient boy from South Africa.
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Patterns of variation in cis-regulatory regions: examining evidence of purifying selection
Thijessen and others from the group highlighted the genomic signatures of purifying selection under consideration of confounding factors such as demography. The results appeared in BMC Genomics. Abstract Background With only 2 % of the human genome consisting of protein coding genes, functionality across the rest of the genome has been the subject of much…
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Genomic Analyses of Pre-European Conquest Human Remains from the Canary Islands Reveal Close Affinity to Modern North Africans
Some of us and the ATLAS of a 1000 Ancient genomes team were involved in a new study published in Current Biology. It investigates the origin of the aboriginal inhabitants of the Canary Islands (Guanche). By leveraging genomes of 11 ancient Guanche individuals we showed a close relationship of them to extant Northwest Africans and leaving up to…
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Southern African ancient genomes estimate modern human divergence to 350,000 to 260,000 years ago
Carina Schlebusch with her team just published analyses of the ancient remains from South Africans in Science today. You can find more information about this fascinating study in our post: Ancient DNA pushes human emergence back. Anatomically modern humans evolved in Africa, but pinpointing when has been difficult. Schlebusch et al. sequenced three ancient African genomes from the…
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A female Viking warrior confirmed by genomics
A new publication in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology involving a few of us and the ATLAS of a 1000 Ancient genomes team unmasked a high ranking Viking warrior to be a woman. The story received ample media coverage in international news. Abstract Objectives The objective of this study has been to confirm the…
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Ancient X chromosomes reveal contrasting sex bias in Neolithic and Bronze Age Eurasian migrations
A new PNAS publication by Goldberg, Günther, Rosenberg and Jakobsson (2017) reveals more about sex-biased migrations into Neolithic Europe. Significance Studies of differing female and male demographic histories on the basis of ancient genomes can provide insight into the social structures and cultural interactions during major events in human prehistory. We consider the sex-specific demography…