The genetic ancestry of modern lions
Marc de Manuel and coworkers have a new paper in PNAS that presents some new findings about lion population history from whole-genome sequencing. The paper h...
Marc de Manuel and coworkers have a new paper in PNAS that presents some new findings about lion population history from whole-genome sequencing. The paper h...
From the bottom of the sea this week comes another new fossil hominin. The specimen is a partial mandible, described in Nature Communications, by Chun-Hsiang...
Notable paper: Kimberly F. McManus, Joanna L. Kelley, Shiya Song, et al. 2015. Inference of Gorilla demographic and selective history from whole genome seque...
The rapidly changing field of ancient DNA has settled into a kind of normal science, as several teams of researchers have coalesced around a set of approache...
Kevin Langergraber and colleagues (2014) have undertaken a study of Y chromosome variation within chimpanzee communities of Uganda. Their goal was to estimat...
Ancient human populations like the Neandertals and Denisovans were not separate biological species.
It is notable that we now have evidence for interbreeding among every kind of hominin we have DNA from, and some we don’t.
The other day I was having a long conversation about Denisovans and human origins. My friend suggested that “Denisovans” sound like some kind of Star Trek ci...
A new paper examines the parasite load of a group of wild chimpanzees for Plasmodium, the parasite that causes malaria DeNys:2013. Several strains of Plasmod...
Adam Siepel has written a very useful explainer about a new preprint he has posted with Matthew Rasmussen on the arXiv preprint server: “Our Paper: Genome-wi...
Elizabeth Pennisi reports from the Biology of Genomes conference at Cold Spring Harbor, New York: “More Genomes From Denisova Cave Show Mixing of Early Human...
Let no one say that I’m an uncritical voice about the many advantages of releasing preprints. They do have their downsides. Lack of editing is one.
I read with interest your post on: http://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/neandertals/pigmentation/neandertal-introgression-1000-genomes-style-2011.html
Razib Khan has started writing up his notes on this week’s conference of the American Society of Human Genetics: “Reflections on the evolution at ASHG 2012”....
A new paper by Federico Snchez-Quinto and colleagues reports on comparisons of North African population samples with the Neandertal DNA project data Sanchez-...
Science today has released the new paper on the Denisova high-coverage genome by Mattias Meyer and colleagues from Svante Pääbo’s group Meyer:Denisova:2012. ...
UPDATE (2015-10-21): This post has gotten some attention from social media recently, because Ötzi has been in the news. Later analyses have made clear that o...
This post is from 2012 and the results here are no longer current. Readers can find more current information about Neandertal introgression in later posts.
Razib Khan comments on the current round of Henry Louis Gates ancestry programming: “Finding fake roots”, and “Reification is alright by me! Razib notes that...
Re: Neandertal introgression, 1000 Genomes style:
This lab has a take-home assignment, which is worth three points when you turn it in at next week’s lab section.
When individuals mate locally, different populations tend to diverge from each other in the frequencies of their alleles. Genetic differences between populat...
Ann Gibbons reports Gibbons:diabetes:2011 from the International Congress of Human Genetics, on papers that examine GWAS risk alleles for type 2 diabetes: “D...
Re: “How widespread is Denisovan ancestry today?” and “Potato sack race”:
Worth amplifying from Dienekes’ Anthropology Blog, “Y chromosomes of the Bahamas”:
Dalton Luther reflects on the Denisovan admixture paper Skoglund:Jakobsson:2011 that I wrote about earlier this week (“How widespread is Denisovan ancestry t...
Last month, David Reich and colleagues Reich:Denisova:2011 reported on estimates of Denisovan ancestry for island and mainland Asian populations. Their most ...
Dienekes links to and discusses a current paper by George Busby and colleagues Busby:peopling:2011 on the Y chromosome chronology for the settlement of Europ...
Technology Review reports on a recent conference trying to spread data mining techniques. The point of departure is the growth of electronic sensor networks ...
Dr. Hawks, I greatly enjoyed your course on the rise of humans I purchased through the Teaching Company. I could not find the answer to this question: ...
Paleogenomics is changing the way we study evolution. In a number of cases, it now allows us to study extinct organisms with the same methods as we study liv...
Earlier this spring, I wrote about a paper by Brenna Henn and colleagues that presented new data on SNP variation in recent African hunter-gatherer populatio...
Razib’s post on the genetics of canids (“A map of charismatic canid genomic variation”) does a nice summary of a recent paper in Genome Research, by vonHoldt...
When last we saw the Vi 33.16 X chromosome, I was wresting out its secrets by looking for SNP haplotypes shared by this Neandertal with the European and Afri...
Kim Hill and colleagues described in last week’s Science a study of kinship within bands of hunter-gatherers known from ethnographic research Hill:Co-residen...
When I wrote about the Denisova genome late last year, I claimed that “A large-scale reorganization of the science of human origins is upon us.”
Last year, this Neandertal genome came out. No doubt you’ve heard about it. So maybe by now you’re wondering where the new science is that’s being done on th...
Hi John, I enjoy your blog very much. Ive been reading a lot recently on human origins and genetics (most recently, for example, Nicholas Wades book Before...
Today, a paper by David Reich and colleagues presents the nuclear genome of the Denisova pinky bone Reich:Denisova:2010. This is the second whole genome of a...
Nature this week carries a story by Ewen Callaway titled, “The rise of the genome bloggers”. The main subject is Dienekes Pontikos, whose “Dodecad Ancestry P...
When I wrote earlier in the week about the 1000 Genomes Project results, I mentioned that a second paper was being published in Science. That paper, by Peter...
The first of the papers describing results from the 1000 Genomes project has been released today in Nature 1000Genomes:Nature:2010.
Peter Ralph and Graham Coop have an interesting paper in the current Genetics, titled, “Parallel Adaptation: One or Many Waves of Advance of an Advantageous ...
Marie-France Deguilloux and colleagues Deguilloux:2010 present a short analysis of ancient mtDNA recovered from a Neolithic burial at Prissé-la-Charrière, be...
A reader reminded me of a second paper on chimpanzee population structure, using a different Bayesian framework, which came out shortly after the study by Jo...
Back in 2005, I reviewed the first description of fossil chimpanzee teeth, from the Middle Pleistocene of the Kapthurin Formation, Kenya, dating to around 50...
Before the Neandertal genome release last week, I was reading (thanks to a correspondent) an essay that James Noonan wrote for the current Genome Research. T...
Green and colleagues, in their paper describing the Neandertal genome sequence, concluded that some genetic mixture between Neandertals and the contemporary ...
I’m going to point to Rex Dalton’s piece today with relatively little comment:
Alon Keinan and David Reich Keinan:Reich:2010 have tested an obvious prediction of the hypothesis that recent selection has had a major effect on variation a...
I am examining the pathways that climate might have influenced human evolution, and as I wrote earlier, I’m focusing first on the issue of relatively short-t...
There’s a new paper in PLoS ONE by Virginie Fabre, Silvana Condemi and Anna Degioanni, titled “Genetic evidence of geographical groups among Neanderthals.” I...
Different populations of humans live at markedly different densities. Human populations historically have had very different growth rates. Although Pleistoce...
Genetic Future and Gene Expression have commented today on the relative roles of selection and demography in shaping the genetic differences between populati...
Last week when I wrote about the study of African mtDNA variation by Behar and colleagues, I focused on the issue of population size. To me, that must be th...
Looking back through the Chimpanzee Genome Consortium (2005) paper, I find this: