Recent local adaptation in modern human populations.

Aida Andres (primary)
GEE
UCL
Garrett Hellenthal (secondary)
GEE
UCL

Abstract

Human evolution is interesting from different points of view. One of them is that the ancestors of modern humans lived in Africa for millions of years, and colonised non-African territories just in the last ~50,000. They settled in territories that differ strikingly in important environmental factors, and this was accompanied by strong pressure to adapt locally. In this project, we will develop novel methods that combine modern and ancient genomes to quantify the influence of recent local adaptation in humans, identify the targets of selection, and infer their evolutionary histories and effects in present-day phenotypes.


References

• Key FM, Abdud-Aziz M, Peter B, d’Amatto M, Dennis M, Schmidt J, Andrés AM. Human local adaptation of the TRPM8 cold receptor along a latitudinal cline. PLoS Genetics 14: e1007298 (2018).
• Key FM, Fu Q, Romaine F, Lachmann M, Andrés AM. Human adaptation and population differentiation in the light of ancient genomes. Nature Communications 7:10775 (2016).
• Danemann M, Andrés AM, Kelso J. Adaptive variation in human toll-like receptors is contributed by Neanderthal- and Denisova-like introgressed haplotypes. The American Journal of Human Genetics 98: 22–33 (2016).
• Hellenthal G, Busby GBJ, Band G, Wilson JF, Capelli C, Falush D, Myers S. A genetic atlas of human admixture history. Science 343:747-751 (2014).
• Key FM, Peter B, Dennis M, Huerta-Sánchez E, Tang W, Prokunina-Olsson L, Nielsen R, Andrés AM. Selection on a variant associated with improved viral clearance induced local, adaptive pseudogenization of interferon lambda 4 (IFNL4). PLoS Genetics 10:e1004681 (2014).
• Hellenthal G, Auton A, Falush D. Inferring human colonization history using a copying model. PLoS Genetics 4:e1000078 (2008)


BBSRC Area
Genes, development and STEM* approaches to biology
Area of Biology
EvolutionGenetics
Techniques & Approaches
BioinformaticsGeneticsMathematics / StatisticsSimulation / Modelling