Čížková Martina, Hofmanová Zuzana, Mokhtar Mohammed G, Janoušek Václav, Diallo Issa, Munclinger Pavel, Černý Viktor
a Department of Anthropology and Human Genetics, Faculty of Science , Charles University , Prague , Czech Republic.
b Palaeogenetics Group , Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz , Mainz , Germany.
Ann Hum Biol. 2017 Sep;44(6):537-545. doi: 10.1080/03014460.2017.1328073. Epub 2017 May 31.
The origin of Western African pastoralism, represented today by the Fulani nomads, has been a highly debated issue for the past decades, and has not yet been conclusively resolved.
This study focused on Alu polymorphisms in sedentary and nomadic populations across the African Sahel to investigate patterns of diversity that can complement the existing results and contribute to resolving issues concerning the origin of West African pastoralism.
A new dataset of 21 Alu biallelic markers covering a substantial part of the African Sahel has been analysed jointly with several published North African populations.
Interestingly, with regard to Alu variation, the relationship of Fulani pastoralists to North Africans is not as evident as was earlier revealed by studies of uniparental loci such as mtDNA and NRY. Alu insertions point rather to an affinity of Fulani pastoralists to Eastern Africans also leading a pastoral lifestyle.
It is suggested that contemporary Fulani pastoralists might be descendants of an ancestral Eastern African population that, while crossing the Sahara in the Holocene, admixed slightly with a population of Eurasian (as evidenced by uniparental polymorphisms) ancestry. It seems that, in the Fulani pastoralists, Alu elements reflect more ancient genetic relationships than do uniparental genetic systems.
以富拉尼游牧民为代表的西非游牧业的起源，在过去几十年里一直是一个备受争议的问题，至今尚未得到最终解决。
本研究聚焦于非洲萨赫勒地区定居和游牧人群的Alu多态性，以调查多样性模式，从而补充现有研究结果，并有助于解决有关西非游牧业起源的问题。
一个包含21个Alu双等位基因标记的新数据集覆盖了非洲萨赫勒地区的大部分区域，并与几个已发表的北非人群数据进行了联合分析。
有趣的是，就Alu变异而言，富拉尼游牧民与北非人之间的关系并不像早期对线粒体DNA和Y染色体非重组区等单亲位点的研究所显示的那样明显。Alu插入反而表明富拉尼游牧民与同样过着游牧生活方式的东非人存在亲缘关系。
有人提出，当代富拉尼游牧民可能是东非一个祖先群体的后裔，该群体在全新世穿越撒哈拉沙漠时，与具有欧亚血统（单亲多态性证明）的群体略有混合。在富拉尼游牧民中，Alu元件似乎比单亲遗传系统反映出更古老的遗传关系。
