Liu Dang, Ko Albert Min-Shan, Stoneking Mark
Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig 04103, Germany.
Human Evolutionary Genetics Unit, Institut Pasteur, UMR 2000, CNRS, Paris 75015, France.
PNAS Nexus. 2023 May 16;2(5):pgad122. doi: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgad122. eCollection 2023 May.
The origin and dispersal of the Austronesian language family, one of the largest and most widespread in the world, have long attracted the attention of linguists, archaeologists, and geneticists. Even though there is a growing consensus that Taiwan is the source of the spread of Austronesian languages, little is known about the migration patterns of the early Austronesians who settled in and left Taiwan, i.e. the "Into-Taiwan" and "out-of-Taiwan" events. In particular, the genetic diversity and structure within Taiwan and how this relates to the into-/out-of-Taiwan events are largely unexplored, primarily because most genomic studies have largely utilized data from just two of the 16 recognized Highland Austronesian groups in Taiwan. In this study, we generated the largest genome-wide data set of Taiwanese Austronesians to date, including six Highland groups and one Lowland group from across the island and two Taiwanese Han groups. We identified fine-scale genomic structure in Taiwan, inferred the ancestry profile of the ancestors of Austronesians, and found that the southern Taiwanese Austronesians show excess genetic affinities with the Austronesians outside of Taiwan. Our findings thus shed new light on the Into- and Out-of-Taiwan dispersals.
南岛语系是世界上最大且分布最广的语系之一，其起源和传播长期以来一直吸引着语言学家、考古学家和遗传学家的关注。尽管越来越多的人认为台湾是南岛语系传播的源头，但对于早期定居和离开台湾的南岛人的迁徙模式，即“进入台湾”和“离开台湾”事件，人们却知之甚少。特别是，台湾岛内的遗传多样性和结构以及它们与进出台湾事件的关系在很大程度上尚未得到探索，主要是因为大多数基因组研究主要利用了台湾16个公认的高山族南岛语系群体中仅两个群体的数据。在这项研究中，我们生成了迄今为止最大的台湾南岛语系人群全基因组数据集，包括来自全岛的六个高山族群体和一个平地族群体以及两个台湾汉族群体。我们确定了台湾精细的基因组结构，推断了南岛语系人群祖先的血统概况，并发现台湾南部的南岛语系人群与台湾以外的南岛语系人群有过多的遗传亲缘关系。因此，我们的研究结果为进出台湾的迁徙活动提供了新的线索。
