Published in

Nature Research, Nature Communications, 1(5), 2014

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms4513

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

Geographic population structure analysis of worldwide human populations infers their biogeographical origins

Journal article published in 2014 by Eran Elhaik, Tatiana Tatarinova, Dmitri Chebotarev, Ignazio S. Piras, Carla Maria Calò, Carla Maria Calò, Piras Is, Antonella De Montis, Manuela Atzori, Monica Marini, Sergio Tofanelli, Paolo Francalacci, Luca Pagani ORCID, Chris Tyler-Smith, Theodore G. Schurr and other authors.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

Full text: Download

Green circle
Preprint: archiving allowed
Red circle
Postprint: archiving forbidden
Green circle
Published version: archiving allowed
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

The search for a method that utilizes biological information to predict humans’ place of origin has occupied scientists for millennia. Over the past four decades, scientists have employed genetic data in an effort to achieve this goal but with limited success. While biogeographical algorithms using next-generation sequencing data have achieved an accuracy of 700 km in Europe, they were inaccurate elsewhere. Here we describe the Geographic Population Structure (GPS) algorithm and demonstrate its accuracy with three data sets using 40,000–130,000 SNPs. GPS placed 83% of worldwide individuals in their country of origin. Applied to over 200 Sardinians villagers, GPS placed a quarter of them in their villages and most of the rest within 50 km of their villages. GPS’s accuracy and power to infer the biogeography of worldwide individuals down to their country or, in some cases, village, of origin, underscores the promise of admixture-based methods for biogeography and has ramifications for genetic ancestry testing. ; Eran Elhaik . & The Genographic Consortium . et.al. ; Alan Cooper & Wolgang Haak are members of the Genographic Consortium