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Human genomic regions with exceptionally high levels of population differentiation identified from 911 whole-genome sequences
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Human genomic regions with exceptionally high levels of population differentiation identified from 911 whole-genome sequences

Vincenza Colonna, Qasim Ayub, Yuan Chen, Luca Pagani, Pierre Luisi, Marc Pybus, Erik Garrison, Yali Xue, Chris Tyler-Smith and 1000 Genomes Project Consortium
Genome biology, Vol.15(6), pp.R88-R88
2014
DOI: 10.1186/gb-2014-15-6-r88
PMCID: PMC4197830
PMID: 24980144
url
https://doi.org/10.1186/gb-2014-15-6-r88View
Published (Version of record) Open Access

Abstract

Background Population differentiation has proved to be effective for identifying loci under geographically localized positive selection, and has the potential to identify loci subject to balancing selection. We have previously investigated the pattern of genetic differentiation among human populations at 36.8 million genomic variants to identify sites in the genome showing high frequency differences. Here, we extend this dataset to include additional variants, survey sites with low levels of differentiation, and evaluate the extent to which highly differentiated sites are likely to result from selective or other processes. Results We demonstrate that while sites with low differentiation represent sampling effects rather than balancing selection, sites showing extremely high population differentiation are enriched for positive selection events and that one half may be the result of classic selective sweeps. Among these, we rediscover known examples, where we actually identify the established functional SNP, and discover novel examples including the genes ABCA12, CALD1 and ZNF804, which we speculate may be linked to adaptations in skin, calcium metabolism and defense, respectively. Conclusions We identify known and many novel candidate regions for geographically restricted positive selection, and suggest several directions for further research.
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