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Welcome to the wiki regarding the research training course taken the summer of 2019 at EBC. Supervisor is Maximilian Larena and the topic of focus is selection found in various populations in The Philippines.
The paradigm of genetic data has enabled us to do research in evolutionary biology unprecedented by previous methods of gathering data. It has allowed us to study relationships between human species, the composition of admixture among various groups. It has allowed us to track the migration routes our ancestors took when they populated every continent of the planet, and many other fields of interest.
The first evidence of the modern human was found in Ethiopia, dated 150-190.000 years back. Evidence of human activity outside of africa has been found from 100.000 years ago, and evidence of human activity in the far east, china, has been found from 80.000 years ago.
Traces of archaic human dna has been found in all the samples gathered outside of Africa, where Neanderthals dna is most abundant. The two archaic human species found is Neanderthals and Denisovans. Neanderthals seen to have been widespread over the earth, and Denisovans mainly found in Eurasia.
The introgression with archaic human species seem to have been beneficial for the adaption of certain environments for the anatomically modern human. A good example is the EPAS 1 haplotype found in Tibetans. This variant seem to have been introduced in tibetans via introgression from the Denisovans. Many examples like this exist where genetic variants from archaic human seem to have given us evolutionary benefits.
To understand the genetic composition of a population it could help to know about the ancestry of the genes that can be found within the population. In the philippines, more than 90% of the populations carries an admixed genomic ancestry, meaning that the genome is a mixture of different ancestors coming from different places. The two expected ancestors to be found in our case is the Philippine Negrito hunter-gatherers and the Cordilleran highland agriculturalists. How does the admixture look between the two ancestors? Can we find selection implying that genes from a certain ancestor is more favoured than the other? By looking at the structure of a genome, I.e how much of the ancestral dna from each subspecies is found in the individual, how evenly itโs spread throughout the genome etc we can gain information about potential selection taking place.
Ill make sure to see that my results are statistically significant, more on this later on.