Department of Anthropology, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida.
Genetics Institute, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida.
Am J Phys Anthropol. 2019 Jun;169(2):227-239. doi: 10.1002/ajpa.23818. Epub 2019 Mar 19.
Modern humans are thought to have interbred with Neanderthals in the Near East soon after modern humans dispersed out of Africa. This introgression event likely took place in either the Levant or southern Arabia depending on the dispersal route out of Africa that was followed. In this study, we compare Neanderthal introgression in contemporary Levantine and southern Arabian populations to investigate Neanderthal introgression and to study Near Eastern population history.
We analyzed genotyping data on >400,000 autosomal SNPs from seven Levantine and five southern Arabian populations and compared these data to those from populations from around the world including Neanderthal and Denisovan genomes. We used f and D statistics to estimate and compare levels of Neanderthal introgression between Levantine, southern Arabian, and comparative global populations. We also identified 1,581 putative Neanderthal-introgressed SNPs within our dataset and analyzed their allele frequencies as a means to compare introgression patterns in Levantine and southern Arabian genomes.
We find that Levantine and southern Arabian populations have similar levels of Neanderthal introgression to each other but lower levels than other non-Africans. Furthermore, we find that introgressed SNPs have very similar allele frequencies in the Levant and southern Arabia, which indicates that Neanderthal introgression is similarly distributed in Levantine and southern Arabian genomes.
We infer that the ancestors of contemporary Levantine and southern Arabian populations received Neanderthal introgression prior to separating from each other and that there has been extensive gene flow between these populations.
现代人类被认为在现代人类离开非洲后不久就与尼安德特人在近东地区杂交。根据所遵循的离开非洲的扩散路线，这种基因渗入事件可能发生在黎凡特或阿拉伯南部。在这项研究中，我们比较了当代黎凡特和阿拉伯南部人口中的尼安德特人基因渗入，以调查尼安德特人基因渗入情况并研究近东人口历史。
我们分析了来自七个黎凡特和五个阿拉伯南部人口的超过 400,000 个常染色体 SNPs 的基因分型数据，并将这些数据与来自世界各地的人群（包括尼安德特人和丹尼索万人的基因组）的数据进行了比较。我们使用 f 和 D 统计量来估计和比较黎凡特、阿拉伯南部和比较全球人群之间的尼安德特人基因渗入水平。我们还在我们的数据集内鉴定了 1,581 个假定的尼安德特人基因渗入 SNP，并分析了它们的等位基因频率，以比较黎凡特和阿拉伯南部基因组中的基因渗入模式。
我们发现，黎凡特和阿拉伯南部人群彼此之间具有相似水平的尼安德特人基因渗入，但比其他非非洲人低。此外，我们发现，渗入的 SNP 在黎凡特和阿拉伯南部具有非常相似的等位基因频率，这表明尼安德特人基因渗入在黎凡特和阿拉伯南部基因组中分布相似。
我们推断，当代黎凡特和阿拉伯南部人群的祖先在彼此分离之前就已经接受了尼安德特人的基因渗入，并且这些人群之间存在广泛的基因流。
