Abstract
Asia harbors substantial cultural and linguistic diversity, but the geographic structure of genetic variation across the continent remains enigmatic. Here we report a large-scale survey of autosomal variation from a broad geographic sample of Asian human populations. Our results show that genetic ancestry is strongly correlated with linguistic affiliations as well as geography. Most populations show relatedness within ethnic/linguistic groups, despite prevalent gene flow among populations. More than 90% of East Asian (EA) haplotypes could be found in either Southeast Asian (SEA) or Central-South Asian (CSA) populations and show clinal structure with haplotype diversity decreasing from south to north. Furthermore, 50% of EA haplotypes were found in SEA only and 5% were found in CSA only, indicating that SEA was a major geographic source of EA populations.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 1541-1545 |
Number of pages | 5 |
Journal | SCIENCE |
Volume | 326 |
Issue number | 5959 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Dec 11 2009 |
Externally published | Yes |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General